Should I Get A Flu Shot?

It's that time of year again. Everyone seems to be advertising the flu vaccine. Your doctor, your local hospital, walk-in clinics, and even the local pharmacy all have the flu vaccine ready and waiting for you to get vaccinated. But, should you get it? I'm not going to tell you either way. What I will do is supply you with the evidence from a number of comprehensive reviews on the scientific and medical literature done on the flu vaccine. This way you can make an informed decision on your own on whether or not to get the flu shot.

As a clinical pharmacist, I'm just as interested as you are on whether or not the flu shot is worth getting. For this reason, I did what any respective healthcare professional would do. I turned to the Cochrane Collaboration for answers.

The Cochrane Collaboration is a non-profit, international network of over 28,000 individuals from over 100 countries. These individuals work to provide unbiased, evidence-based reviews from available scientific and medical research studies to help healthcare providers, policy-makers, patients and their advocates make informed decisions regarding their health care. These reviews are called the Cochrane Reviews. These reviews are highly trusted and credible because they are free of commercial bias. The Cochrane Collaboration doesn't allow big money or special interest groups to taint their organization or their highly respected work. This is made evident in their commercial sponsorship policy:

"The Cochrane Collaboration has gained an international reputation for producing evidence of the highest standard to inform healthcare decision-making. To maintain this reputation, we are committed to ensuring that the results of Cochrane Reviews are not influenced by personal or commercial interests, particularly from the pharmaceutical industry and medical device manufacturers. Sponsorship of Cochrane Reviews, their derivative products, author teams and the Cochrane 'entities' who produce them, by any commercial source, is strictly prohibited."

Plant-Based Diets for Seniors

"Old age isn't for sissies," one adage attempts to advise humorously. Despite the saying’s levity, it hits a little too close to the truth. The term "elderly" is the last life-stage known and listed in the human life cycle before death. Many aspects of an elderly person's life are designed to prolong it.

Frequent visits to doctors are scheduled for preventative care, a higher-than-average number of prescriptions are ingested to treat the common diseases that accompany old age and even potential problems are anticipated with measures such as a personal medical alert system or the installation of bathroom grab bars.

Special diets are often included in such life-extending efforts. Elderly individuals may forego added salt to help treat high blood pressure or eliminate candy from their diets to help with high blood sugar levels. More and more, physicians and nutrition experts are also advocating plant-based diets for seniors.

Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet

A recent study by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association underscores some of the benefits of a plant-based diet. Study participants who followed a vegetarian diet had better overall nutritional profiles than meat eaters, and their diets included more essential vitamins and nutrients than the non-vegetarians' diets. Vegetarians also ate healthier foods and had lower blood glucose and cholesterol levels.