VACCINES
Looking through a holistic lens.
This cartoon about vaccinations has been circulating on social media. After seeing it a dozen times and seeing more passionate posts on the subject than I can count, I started a post on Facebook with my thoughts and realized I have enough to say to make this an actual blog post. And since people often ask me for my take on vaccines as they are preparing to become new moms and dads I hope it'll be good for that too.
Let me start by saying three main things:
#1
My kids, myself, and my husband are fully vaccinated. I had my kids vaccinated on a modified schedule, which I now think might be unnecessary. I’ll tell you why in a minute.
#2
I’ve formed my views on vaccinations on historical evidence combined with my TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) views on health, balance, disease, and dysfunction.
#3
While I agree vaccines are good and important, I sometimes disagree with the way vaccines are recommended to be given in the US. Namely to mildly ill children and with many different vaccines at once … but even here there’s definitely gray area.
Let's dig in.
Vaccinations have absolutely changed the world for the better. For any of the arguments as to why I will happily default to the above cartoon link. It says it all very effectively. We don't want polio. Measles and Mumps returning and hurting kids and families sucks. There's no good reason for this! We’ve also seen in the COVID-19 pandemic, unvaccinated areas allow for more unchecked disease spread and more mutations of viruses. If we all do our part things are better for us all!
But what about Autism and toxic metals and other scary claims!? Before I go on any further, I want to be crystal clear, I do not think vaccines = autism and I think the ingredients in vaccines are a-okay *unless you have an allergy to them. But what I also think is that vaccines = taxation and stress for our bodies, albeit much much MUUUUCH less than getting the actual disease.
Infants and children, just by the very nature of being an infant or child, have a lot to keep up with energetically. They are growing exponentially. They are mastering many developmental skills and abilities - motor, cognitive, social, the list goes on! And I believe strongly, that anything we add to their to-do list should be done mindfully. I've written articles about this as well as being too busy and scheduled. And the same thing applies to exposing them to vaccines when they’re acutely sick for example.
That said, the immune system is A-MAZ-BALLS (yup, I said it the classiest way possible). And honestly, our immune systems have to rally and respond when we walk outside during allergy season, heal from a paper cut, shake someone’s hand, eat food… basically do anything that isn’t inside a hermetically sealed bubble… and actually even then it’d still be doing a ton of stuff! So us thinking giving it a vaccine is going to totally throw it for a loop is just silly!
What I chose for my family and what I recommend.
So what did we do with our kiddos and what do I recommend? I suggest taking account of actual risk. Is the baby in daycare? Were they a premie? Is there an older sibling bringing crud home from school? And then pace vaccines IF it makes sense.
Our kids were full-term and at home and not in daycare, so we waited until they were 1 month old to get started with any vaccinations.
We made sure they were reasonably healthy before giving any vaccines. Surprisingly it is standard for pediatricians to give vaccines to mildly to moderately ill children.
We chose days where we could just come home and rest after, not run errands, go to school, etc.
We did fewer shots at a time. Where some routine healthy child visits might call for several vaccines at once, we picked one or two.
We gave the vaccinations for the things they could actually contract first, starting with the most serious. For example, meningitis is something that is devastating and possible for them to be exposed to, right now COVID is rampant. If your kiddo is eligible for that vaccine ASAP is the right time to get it :)
We saved the vaccinations for things like polio (*seriously 2022!? I guess Polio is now possible again. Ugh.) that are not around anymore (but could come back if people stop vaccinating… again… 2022 update. I rest my case.) for later. But we still did them to do our part!
Our pediatric clinic allows families to just pop in for vaccines without appointments during their walk in afternoon hours, so we could just stop in between regular visits to space out the shots with no office charge fees. It is a bit more work for me, but less taxation for the kids! They were also fully vaccinated well before Kindergarten (and again were not in daycare when I was choosing to opt for some of the vaccines to start a month or two after they were born).
"So it's not that the vaccine causes something, it just looks that way if you aren't seeing things through a holistic lens."
And on that note of taxation ... here's the bottom line. If not for fear of directly causing autism, why does resting after a vaccine or pacing them even matter? Well, because (in TCM) any type of health concern (autoimmune, ADHD, autism, allergies and asthma, etc) are sometimes the result of cumulative damage and growing imbalances. So while one shot doesn't = autism, one shot might seem to look like a tipping point where signs of autism start to show up because that particular child was increasingly out of balance for many many reasons like constitutional/genetic predisposition, microbiom issues, diet, lifestyle, trauma, environmental pollution, stress... the list goes on and on! So it's not that the vaccine caused something, it just looks that way if you aren't seeing things through a holistic lens. This explains why some parents swear that their child's problems happened after getting a shot, but that the vast majority of kids tolerate that shot just fine and there's no actual data that supports the idea of vaccines = issues (the science IS really clear on this)!
And sure, vaccines can = acute allergic reactions. This article is not about that and you should discuss any known allergens with your providers (ie. Egg allergies, PEG allergies, etc). This is about overall health and balance. Which is the bigger point here!
Through the holistic lens.
Through a holistic lens, when we keep ourselves and our kiddos as in balance and healthy as possible (through ALL our choices and how they add up), we set ourselves up to be health in any and every way we reasonably can - through diet, sleep, down time, free play, non-toxic cleaning and home products, spacing out and pacing vaccinations but DOING them and protecting from the much worse illness, etc - we cumulatively keep the scales from tipping into disease and dysfunction to the best of our abilities. It's not always enough given different constitutions and factors that are outside of our control, but it is the best we can do, and that's a lot!
Bottom line! Getting our vaccines as a whole IS medically safe and protects us all. We can try to be a bit more holistic in everything we do, but it’s about finding balance, being moderate, and sustainable too.
Warmly,
Nicole
Nicole Lange
LICENSED ACUPUNCTURIST
HOLISTIC FERTILITY EDUCATOR
