Vaccine dietary taboos

Unless you are clearly allergic to a certain type of food, or have severe adverse reactions such as obvious fever, local redness, swelling and pain after vaccination, you do not need to change your eating habits when taking any conventional vaccine (including COVID-19, influenza, HPV, hepatitis B, shingles, etc.). More than 90% of the taboos posted online such as "cannot eat spicy food, cannot touch seafood, cannot eat eggs, cannot drink milk tea" have no clear scientific basis.

I worked as a volunteer at the vaccination site of a community health service center for half a year in the past two years. I was asked at least 20 to 30 times a day about food taboos. What impressed me most was a little girl who had just finished the college entrance examination. Before getting the first HPV shot, she squatted at the door with her mobile phone in her hands and asked me: "Sister, can I go eat Haidilao after I get the shot?" I made an appointment with my classmates and made reservations, but the Internet said that eating spicy food will make the vaccine ineffective. ”I took her directly to ask the vaccination doctor who was attending the consultation. The doctor was very happy for a long time and said that as long as you don't have diarrhea and allergies when eating hot pot, and don't have stomach upset after eating, which will weaken your immunity, there is no ineffectiveness.

Speaking of this, I have to mention why the saying "avoiding foods to eat" has been spread for so many years. On the one hand, the vaccine technology in the early years was not as mature as it is now. The adverse reaction rate of many live attenuated vaccines after vaccination is much higher than that of today's inactivated vaccines and recombinant vaccines. At that time, in order to avoid confusion between discomfort caused by food and vaccine reactions, and to reduce stimulation and aggravation of adverse reactions, doctors would generally recommend everyone to "eat lightly", and as time passed down, it became all kinds of strange taboos. On the other hand, traditional medicine already has the concept of "disease". Many people regard vaccination as "suffering a minor injury" and automatically bring in the nursing logic of avoiding exposure after trauma. This view is still recognized by many grassroots medical staff, and it cannot be said to be completely unreasonable - after all, if you eat something you don't usually touch and trigger an allergy, you can't tell whether it is a vaccine problem or a food problem, which will only increase your anxiety.

Of course, this does not mean that after vaccination, you can eat and drink without any scruples. I just met a friend last month. He drank half a kilogram of high-strength liquor the night he got the flu shot. The next day, his arm was so swollen that he couldn't lift it, and his fever reached 37.8 degrees. He was so scared that he thought he had the flu. He went to the hospital for a checkup for a long time. The doctor said that alcohol dilated blood vessels and aggravated the local inflammatory reaction. It was not a big problem. He went home and applied ice for two days and it was fine. There was also an aunt who, after getting vaccinated against herpes zoster, insisted on trying some tropical fruits that had just come on the market. She had never eaten them before, and her mouth swelled up. She went to the vaccination site and complained that there was something wrong with the vaccine. In the end, it was found that she was allergic to fruits, which was quite frustrating.

There is actually no completely unified view on this matter in the industry. Most doctors who do evidence-based medical research believe that as long as there is no clear history of allergies, there is no need to restrict what you want to eat. There is currently no research to prove that ordinary diet will affect the antibody production efficiency of vaccines.； Many doctors and nurses doing clinical care will recommend that you try to avoid overly spicy, alcoholic, and allergic foods that you have never eaten within 3 days after vaccination. This does not mean that something will happen if you eat it, but it is mainly to help everyone reduce unnecessary risks and save you trouble.

Oh, by the way, there is also a very widely spread saying of "not eating eggs". This actually only applies to a very small number of people who have a history of severe immediate allergy to eggs and are vaccinated with vaccines cultured in chicken embryos (such as some influenza vaccines and yellow fever vaccines). If you usually eat tea eggs every morning in the morning and you are fine, then you can eat whatever you want after the vaccine, and it will not affect you at all. I once saw a young man who was hungry for two days after being vaccinated. He said that he was afraid that eating "hair products" would affect his antibodies. In the end, he fainted due to hypoglycemia. This is really not necessary. You can eat normally to ensure nutrition, which is more conducive to the production of antibodies.

To put it bluntly, there are never any one-size-fits-all standards for vaccine dietary taboos. If your stomach is usually delicate and you get diarrhea after eating spicy food, then it’s okay to wait for two days after vaccination. ； If you don’t enjoy anything spicy, you’ve never had any problems eating seafood or mangoes, so there’s no need to torture your mouth for an unfounded statement. If you are really unsure, just casually asking the medical staff at the scene after vaccination is much more reliable than searching a bunch of contradictory posts online.