House Call: The Flu Shot—Helpful or Harmful?

Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. This week's question is, Dr. Hyman, should I get a flu shot? This is the question I'm asked all the time by my patients, from my readers. What about the flu shot? The government says that everybody from six months old till they die should get a flu shot every year. So here's the question. Does it work? And is it safe? And do we really need it? The first issue is, does it work? Well, if you look at the Cochrane Database Analysis, this is an independent group of scientists that have no link to any industry, no link to government agencies. They're just scientists. And they've analyzed all the data on flu shots, and they say, you know what? it really doesn't work that well. It doesn't even cover most of the infections that people get. Now for certain populations, I think a flu shot may be necessary. If you're sick, if you're debilitated, if you have respiratory problems, if you have developmental problems and you just are prone to get very sick and can potentially die from the flu, okay, it's worth the risk. And it may not even work that well, but it might reduce the risk somewhat. But for the rest of us, I don't think the flu shot is necessary. Now I know this goes against government recommendations and I know there's a lot of controversy about it. But I encourage you to do your own homework and I encourage you to read the blogs that I've written extensively documenting the science behind why the flu shots don't work as well as we think they do and why they might be harmful. Here's a dirty little secret about the flu shot. It contains mercury. Most of the flu shots that are given in this country are from multi-dose vials. That means you get multiple flu shots in one little vial and to preserve it, they stick in mercury. or thymarasol. And the cumulative dose of thymarasol over your lifetime could have an impact on your health because mercury is a known toxin. It causes immune problems and it causes neurologic problems like dementia or memory issues or other issues. So you really wanna have a flu shot if you're gonna get one that doesn't have thymarasol in it. That's the single dose vial. So remember, number one, the flu shot doesn't work so great, and there are a lot of other things you can do to get healthy, and number two, it contains potentially mercury, so you want to avoid the mercury containing flu shot. So then the question I get is, well, how do I prevent the flu? Well, thankfully, I've written a long blog on this that documents exactly how to build up your immune system, what supplements to take, what to eat, how to make sure you don't get the flu. I've never gotten the flu in my life because I know what to do to take care of myself. It's such simple things you can do. For example, vitamin D. When you take vitamin D and you have adequate vitamin D levels, you can dramatically reduce your incidence of flu. And there are many other suggestions that I have in my blogs. So check out the blogs and learn what you can do to prevent the flu. So thank you for joining me this week. I encourage you to share this with your friends and family on social media, Twitter and Facebook, sign up for the newsletter, and submit your questions so that next week I may make a house call to you.