Prevent Brain Damage · Brain health technique
Flu vaccination
Evidence grade: Context Dependent
The annual influenza vaccine that helps your immune system fight off seasonal flu strains.
- Practice
- Prevent Brain Damage
- Principle
- Protection
- Tactic
- Vaccines & Hygiene
- Health domains
- inflammation
- Evidence grade
- Context Dependent
- Strength of evidence
- Medium
- Effort
- Low
- Time commitment
- Low
How to practice Flu vaccination
Get a flu shot every year, ideally in the fall. It’s especially important for adults over 50 or with chronic conditions, though anyone can benefit. Even if dementia protection varies between studies, preventing a severe flu is useful in itself.
The evidence behind Flu vaccination
Getting the flu triggers weeks of inflammation and can worsen brain oxygen levels, especially in older adults. Large population studies show people who regularly get flu shots have about a 10–40% lower risk of developing dementia later in life. While it is difficult to establish causality in observational studies, there are plausible mechanisms. In addition to reducing how often the brain gets hit with strong inflammatory responses from flus, the brain may also benefit from an overall reduction in systemic inflammation from the flu shot itself.
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