What is an Immunization, and How do they Work?
Channel: BioBalance Healthcast
Date: 2021-08-16

See all the Healthcasts at https://www.biobalancehealth.com/healthcast-blog/

The last year and a half, many new words have been introduced into common daily conversations of Americans, and one of these words is immunization, a word that was previously limited to use in the doctor’s office. 

Since 2020, TV media and social media has used the word immunization often and in many ways that are not related to an individual’s medical care.  Journalists have written and spoken about immunizations in the following ways:

• in a positive way as a life-saving treatment to prevent disease and the spread of disease  
• in a negative way, as a dangerous injection that might cause future disease for those people who receive it
• as a political tool which might be used to force individuals to comply with mandates that infringe on their freedom of choice in the US, or conversely to polarize the population instigating fear and distraction from other more calamitous situations in the world (e.g. Afghanistan being taken over by the Taliban, and the disaster at the southern border of the US);
• as an entitlement belonging to the citizens of the wealthiest nations used to increase their global power over poor countries who cannot afford to immunize their citizens and therefore will lose population and power due to the attrition of their population.   


We have all been witness to these TV, Radio, and social media discussions. I am not a political expert.  I am a medical expert and today I will not comment on any of these current definitions or uses of the word immunization. I believe that most of the controversy today involving whether an individual should choose to take an immunization or not is based on lack of understanding of how immunizations work, and how we can make them more effective. Real information by real physicians who take care of individual patients with the patients’ best interest in mind is what citizens need to hear so they can make informed decisions about their own health.  

The following three lectures will include a medical definition for the word immunization and explain how immunizations work in the human body. In the second lecture I will discuss who will likely benefit medically from these preventive injections and who will not, and in the third, I will recommend how to improve your immune system which will both decrease your susceptibility to viruses and make your response to an immunization more protective.
First let’s get down to what an immunization really is—the definition of immunization.  An immunization is an injection, or a drop of liquid (like the polio immunization that was given as a red drop of liquid on a sugar cube that you took orally), given to an individual to stimulate a person’s own immune system (white blood cells, B cells, T cells, T helper cells, T killer cells) to activate and kill a specific virus. This immune response is done by exposing a person to a piece of dead virus, that cannot infect him, but which looks enough like the whole virus to sensitize and protect the body against succumbing to a future exposure to that particular virus.  When a future exposure to that virus does occur in a healthy individual who has been immunized, the circulating antibodies kill the virus before it infects a person’s cells.

The trick to an immunization being effective is the health of your own immune system, which is affected by age, nutrition, other diseases, medications and diet. The immunization itself does not kill a virus!  The immunization stimulates your own immune system, to make antibodies and if you are not healthy, then the immunization may not be effective! Being healthy and young is your best defense against getting a disease and also to responding and being protected by an immunization!