It came like a thief in the night with one warning day.

I actually just had a conversation with someone in the medical field if I should go get my flu shot since it seemed like a lot of people are getting sick around me. She simply replied with great enthusiasm, “No! Just take vitamin C everyday and you’ll never get sick”. Although the facility infection preventionist may be thought of as the person who always points out what is wrong, Infection Control is a complex field that touches on every aspect of patient care. Now that may have been true and I knew I should have vitamin c everyday anyway, but alas I skipped out for a while thinking I’m invincible even without a flu shot, and honestly, vitamin C is not the only vitamin we need, we should all learn the Health Benefits of Vitamin B as well.

Well lucky me, I go to bed one night and wake up feeling the standard scratch in my throat before the big storm hits. Just great… I saw this coming but still didn’t do anything to prevent it. I mean I will try to only buy and drink juices that have 100% of the daily recommended vitamin c, but I don’t always drink them daily anyway. Here’s a little tip: If you want to keep from getting sick you really should have vitamin c spaced out during the day.  You can take a massive amount of it in one sitting, but the reality is that your body will take what it needs at that specific time and then waste the rest down the toilet. So spread it throughout your routine to make the best use of this sick preventing vitamin. Wearing face masks and examination gloves could also help so that you can prevent infecting others.

Now most times you have it rough and other times you can have it really rough. You know, vomiting, hardcore diarrhea, coughing till you want to knock yourself out and a feeling like your head is about to explode. Personally I prefer not to throw up, or better yet not be sick in the first place! It’s funny how when we get sick we’ll load up on vitamin c and drink fluids as much as possible to combat the damage when if we made it part of our daily regiment the situation probably could have been avoided.

Of course there is the flu shot. Now this is a touchy subject because regardless of who you talk to you’ll hear a lot of different answers. In fact it’s probably about 50/50 on if you should or should not take the shot. I’m not sure if people saying no to it are just paranoid but I catch myself leaning towards this choice myself. This doesn’t mean you definitely shouldn’t, it means you need to decide for yourself. I know that each year there are reports of people passing away due to influenza especially in the age group of 65+. For information sake, a study in Human and Experimental Toxicology reported that there were 590 fetal-loss reports per 1 million pregnant women vaccinated (or 1 per 1,695) during the 2009-2010 flu season (generally regarded as October-March, though flu symptoms can occur any time of the year).

Businessmen, mothers, doctors and your friends all have their own different opinions on taking the annual flu shot and not one is the definitive answer. As it stands, I think I’m going to try and take daily vitamin c, especially around the flu season and avoid the shot for now. What about you?

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