In the biggest study to look at stroke and heart attack risk from specific respiratory infections, researchers found that some of the organisms that can cause a respiratory infection also raise a person’s risk of these adverse events.
According to the study, which was published in the European Respiratory Journal, a person’s chances of having a heart attack are higher in the week after a flu or pneumonia infection, while their stroke risk is raised for a month afterward. Specifically, these respiratory infections make people up to six times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke three days after the infection.
The researchers made their conclusions after studying infection surveillance data in the Scottish Morbidity Record. They compared the rates of cardiovascular events following respiratory infections with the rates in other time periods in the same people. They found that this effect is actually higher in people younger than 65 than it is for older people.
It is believed that this occurs because respiratory infections cause inflammation that can lead to blood clots. In addition, the flu virus can damage the heart muscle.
Flu shot, by extension, also raises your risk of cardiovascular events
We can add this to the growing list of ways that vaccines can kill. By making people more susceptible to the flu, it also makes them more vulnerable to heart attack and stroke. The CDC’s own website acknowledges that the flu shot fails to provide any benefit when the vaccine doesn’t match the circulating viruses, and this happens more often than you think. In late 2014, they got it so wrong that the CDC had to warn people that year’s shot had the wrong strains.
Even if you are lucky enough to get the shot in a year that the developers accurately predicted which viruses would circulate – something that almost never happens – you are still increasing your chances of getting it in future years by getting the shot.
It’s hard to believe that it could work this way, but researchers from the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center discovered that women who were given the flu vaccine experienced weaken immune system responses to the flu in subsequent years, rendering them more vulnerable to the flu – and now, by extension, heart attack and stroke – simply by getting the jab.
Another study, this one carried out by scientists from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy found that people who got the flu shot consecutively in 2012, 2013, and 2014 had a higher chance of infection from new strains of the flu. And following the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic, Canada’s flu surveillance network noted that those who had been given a flu shot the year before had a 1.4 to 2.5-times higher chance of contracting H1N1.
The flu shot, in other words, spreads the flu itself, thereby creating more demand for it. Experts believe the shots make it harder for your immune system to fight off the new strains you’re exposed to after getting the shot.
Now we know that it’s not just your risk of getting the flu that is at stake, but also potentially for more damaging cardiovascular events like heart attack and stroke. It’s no wonder so many informed people run in the opposite direction at the mention of getting a flu shot!
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