Member-only story
How to Best Prepare for Your Vaccine
As a licensed naturopathic doctor, I have been hearing from patients, family and friends with the same question. Are there things to do to prepare for the COVID-19 vaccine? As I have written elsewhere, there are many parts of the public and personal health response to this pandemic, and one part is the vaccine. Pretty sure Lady Liberty here has her arm up ready for her shot!
What follows are basic principles and thoughts. These ideas have not been tested in clinical trials with COVID-19 vaccine specifically. Along with many colleagues, I am advocating for that to take place. We hope to help diminish harm and enhance efficacy of the vaccine from following these basic principles. Please consult your physician on any health decisions you make.
1. If at all possible, get tested for the virus before being vaccinated to ensure you are not actively ill with COVID-19. To be sick and also to take the vaccine may be too much unnecessary stress on your body and may overburden your immune system.
2. Advocate for quantitative COVID-19 testing instead of the dichotomous yes/no testing available today. If your antibody titres are high, consider allowing others to receive the vaccine ahead of you for now, people who currently have no or little protection.
3. Here are reasonable steps to take based on basic naturopathic medicine philosophy, and mirror what we do on the other side of the equation, to support an optimally functioning immune system, to help modify risk should you be exposed to the virus and to decrease severity of illness should you fall ill. We want an immune response to the vaccine, while limiting harm.
a. Take probiotics and if your diet allows, eat cultured/fermented foods (think here, yogurt, kefir, miso, sauerkraut, etc.) in the weeks before and after your vaccine. Research shows that people who have a robust and diverse microbiome fare better with vaccines, and vaccines seem to work better. This makes sense when you consider the ecosystem within which the immune system works.
b. Include prebiotic foods in your diet. In order for probiotics and probiotic food and…
