Enhancing Vaccine Efficacy through Ancient Healing Practices (Part 3)

In this 3-part series, PART 1 explores Cupping + Covid-19 Vaccine, PART 2 explores Herbal Medicine + Covid-19 Vaccine, and finally here, we talk about misguided vaccine hesitancy in the wellness world.

PART 3: Misguided Vaccine Hesitancy in the Wellness World

Hopefully this tidbit of science will be a salve for your COVID-weary soul. Many people who are vaccine hesitant or anti-vaccine in the “wellness” community who have not actually studied the way herbs work in our body, may find it mind-blowing to learn that vaccines work in a way that is more akin to natural medicines than to other pharmaceuticals. The vaccine itself is distinct from a drug, and in many ways has more in common with how some herbs work in the body. 

How so? A pharmaceutical drug alters some aspect of how our body functions through a “silver bullet” approach by binding to a specific target in the body; for example, directly reducing the amount of serotonin reuptake in our brains to alter our moods, or directly interfering with certain chemical pathways to block our production of stomach acid, and so on. In contrast, herbal medicine generally does not directly force the body into a certain state by interfering with a chemical pathway or physiological function, but instead may gently stimulate or trigger the body’s natural response via its interaction with certain compounds found in the plants.

For example, as touched on in Part 2 of this series, many immune-modulating herbs enhance our natural immune response via our body’s recognition of their polysaccharides as being potentially harmful (even though they are harmless); and similarly, herbs with bitter tasting constituents can increase the production of liver enzymes used for detoxification pathways, specifically because our body recognizes bitter compounds as being potentially toxic, triggering an adaptive natural response by our body to enhance detoxification. 

Similar to plant-based compounds, the antigens in vaccines do not directly alter one of our physiologic processes by binding to a target the way drugs do—they are just something otherwise harmless that our immune system recognizes as potentially harmful, thereby triggering a natural physiologic response in our body. 

While injecting a synthetic antigen into our muscle is not exactly “natural,” our body being regularly confronted with potentially harmful foreign substances (aka, xenobiotics), and mounting immune responses as necessary to those substances, is ubiquitous throughout our evolutionary history. Imagine you stepped on a sharp twig, or your cat scratched you and punctured your skin—any foreign material that made its way across your skin barrier from the twig or cat’s claw is going to be analyzed by your immune system, triggering an immune reaction if your body deems it necessary. 

The way many in the wellness world eschew vaccines right along with other pharmaceutical drugs (or even view them as somehow worse than these drugs), illustrates a lack of understanding of the physiology involved. This is not to say there is zero risk with vaccines, but there is a much better safety profile with them than the majority of drugs on the market. And adverse effects associated with a vaccine are generally based in an immune system out of whack than a chemical substance causing direct harm to the body, like a drug having a toxic effect.

Vaccines have the potential to trigger strong immune reactions, just like microorganisms and xenobiotics we naturally encounter on a regular basis do—and in a certain percentage of people, an immune response will go awry in reaction to foreign compounds (whether from a natural exposure or a vaccine). Opting out of the vaccine does not protect you from the possibility of your immune system having an aberrant or dangerous response—you will eventually come in contact with COVID-19 and this is much more likely to trigger a dangerous response than what you would experience as a result of the vaccine.

We must always weigh the risks and benefits when considering a medical intervention, and while no vaccine is completely free of risk, in the case of the COVID vaccines, the risk of not getting vaccinated is statistically far greater for the vast majority of people.