myHealth in the News
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Our very own counselor Carly Gershone appeared on the news! Please enjoy her interview with Ken Barlow on KSTP as she shares what myHealth's mental health program means for young people in our community.
Watch the Interview
Winter Asthma Control
It's that time of year! Enjoy these asthma control tips for winter complements of the Minnesota Department of Health.
The winter months can be difficult for Minnesotans with asthma because of triggers associated with winter and the holidays.
Take steps to control your asthma.
Cold, dry air can trigger asthma but you can avoid this by wearing a scarf around your nose and mouth to keep the air you breathe warm and damp.
All kinds of smoke can trigger asthma, so it's best to avoid wood smoke, e-cigarette vapor, and cigarette smoke.
Avoid using scented products such as candles, incense, and cleaning products.
Live holiday trees and wreaths can contain mold and dust to build up. Consider allergy-friendly alternatives.
Vacuum dusty holiday or winter decorations to avoid allergens.
Continue to take your medications, follow your asthma action plan, and remember your inhaler technique.
Take your controller medication as prescribed, carry your rescue medication with you, and follow your asthma action plan (AAP).
Schedule a visit with your health care provider.
Get your annual flu vaccine.
Pack smart. If you're traveling across country or just for an overnight with friends or family, make sure all asthma medications are packed, inhalers are full (check the expiration date) and that the medications will last the length of the trip.
Remember your inhaler technique.
For more information for patients, families, and caregivers on different types of triggers and how to avoid exposures to specific individual triggers, a MDH trigger information sheet is available in both English and Spanish.
Learn more about improving your asthma during the winter season by visiting the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America's article, 5 Asthma and Allergy Tips for a Healthier Home for the Holidays.
Make sure you know how to use your inhaler.
Improper inhaler technique can negatively impact asthma control. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of American, up to 92% of people with asthma use their device incorrectly.
The National Jewish Health inhaler technique videos or CDC asthma inhaler videos are great resources to review your technique.
Learning More About Vaccines
by Katelyn Maddox
The COVID-19 vaccine is already helping control the spread of COVID-19 worldwide, but how much do you know about vaccines in general?
Children are born with an immune system that has not been exposed and infected with many foreign antigens, so often when kids first get exposed to a disease, the immune system is not able to produce antibodies fast enough to properly fight the disease. Though newborns often have antibodies from their mothers, they go away during the baby's first year. Immunity is what occurs after the body has produced antibodies so that the next time infection occurs the body is able to produce antibodies fast enough to fight the illness.
Vaccines are used to help an immune system become stronger and protect it from different harmful diseases. Throughout the years, they have saved millions of lives. They have proven especially life-saving in immunocompromised populations, like children and older adults. In the United States, vaccines for polio, smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, rubella, measles, and mumps and more have been used to help reduce or eradicate the diseases. Smallpox, for example, killed over 300 million people in the world in the 1900s, but due to vaccination it is completely eradicated. Even if a disease is not common in the U.S., complete eradication is rare and worldwide travel can make diseases easy to spread so diseases that are preventable by vaccine require high vaccination rates to avoid.
Vaccines work by stimulating the body's adaptive immune system and producing antibodies against a specific disease. Often, a weakened form of the disease, such as smallpox, is injected into your body and then your body creates antibodies to fight the weakened disease. This way, if you're exposed to the actual disease then the antibodies the vaccine helped create will destroy and fight off the actual disease (the foreign antigens). The injected antigens are weakened so they don't cause disease, but they are able to produce antibodies to contribute to immunity.
Some children and adults are unable to be vaccinated. There can be many reasons for this, such as age limits or specific medical conditions, so immunization helps protect others in the community. The more people who have taken a vaccine, the less the disease can spread. High vaccination rates are essential because low vaccinate rates can allow diseases to spread again. Everyone needs vaccines. There are more than 12 different vaccines recommended for children to receive before their 6th birthday and there are vaccines intended for later in life too. In order to prevent the spread of contagious diseases, immunizations are key.
There have been many advancements in vaccine creation and usage since the first vaccines were created. We now use vaccines containing weak, live, or killed microorganisms/viruses, as well as protein and/or mRNA. In the 21st century, vaccines are as important as a regular health check-up and are a vital part of preventative care. The U.S. requires stringent regulations for vaccines and has long approval processes for safety, and any side effects (such as a fever) are often considered normal and less severe than the actual disease as your body builds immunity.
In order to protect yourself, your family, and your friends, talk to a healthcare professional about which vaccines are recommended for you today. The CDC is also a great resource for most vaccination questions and further reading.
Why Are Vaccines Important
by Nancy Huber
Eating well, exercising, practicing yoga and mindfulness, getting enough sleep, managing stress, and laughing (yes, laughing) are a few of the things we do during our life to stay healthy.
Another important item that definitely belongs on this list is getting vaccinations. On that note, you might not have heard the U.K. was the first nation to administer fully vetted and authorized COVID-19 vaccines to its citizens. A 90-year-old woman was first to receive it. The second was 81-year-old William Shakespeare. Everyone made a big deal of his name, but it seems to be Much Ado About Nothing.
It's easy to get a vaccine, and when you do you are helping not only yourself stay healthy, but your friends, family, community, and humanity too. From infancy through adulthood, everyone needs vaccines.
Getting vaccinated is important for many reasons. It aids in protecting us from diseases, thus preventing disabilities and complications such as hearing loss, seizures, arm or leg amputations, brain damage and even death. Equity in immunization can contribute to health and economic advantages by preventing illness and the high cost of treatment. It saves millions of dollars in healthcare costs. Getting vaccinated enables us to live healthier and fuller lives.
The immediate benefit of getting a vaccine is individual immunity. That leads to long-term and, at times, lifelong protection against contracting a disease. But if vaccination rates drop to low levels it's possible to have outbreaks of epidemics of diseases we thought had been subdued.
In the past 18 months we have all learned much about the importance of achieving herd immunity with COVID-19. Specific rates of vaccination–which vary widely by disease but are always less than 100 percent–result in herd immunity. Once that's achieved it's difficult for a disease to continue to spread because there are not enough susceptible individuals left to infect. Herd immunity is particularly helpful for infants too young for certain vaccines and those not able to get vaccinated for health reasons. So even for diseases that don't see 100-percent vaccination rates, herd immunity picks up the slack to protect the entire community.
Before vaccines it was common to lose many children in the same family to certain diseases such as Whooping Cough (Pertussis), which can cause uncontrollable coughing, making it difficult to breathe; Measles, which can cause serious complications like pneumonia, seizures and encephalitis; and Diptheria, which can cause a thick coating in the back of the throat or nose, making it hard to swallow or breathe.
Thanks to worldwide vaccination efforts another disease, Polio, which causes paralysis, has been nearly eradicated after having been epidemic in the U.S. in the 1950s. In 2000 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Measles eliminated, too. But because of international travel it reemerges at times, causing pockets of outbreaks. This is much as it was thousands of years ago, when increasing migration, exploration, and trade led to the spread of many diseases.
Also called the "speckled monster" because of the scarring it causes, Smallpox is the only disease to be totally eliminated. That was declared in 1980 and credited to a worldwide vaccination campaign. (You might remember getting a smallpox vaccine as a child, the scratching of the needle on your upper arm leaving a more desirable telltale scar.) Smallpox appeared around 10,000 B.C. It was frequently epidemic in the Middle Ages and caused massive destruction. An estimated 300 million people have succumbed to its ravages.
Attempts to inoculate against smallpox date back to at least the 1500s, when the Chinese ground up dried smallpox scabs into a powder and blew it up the nostrils, which might sound rather unpleasant. But only one to two percent died from this deliberate infection, called variolation, compared to the 30 percent who died after contracting the disease naturally. In 1798 the smallpox vaccine was the first to be developed against a contagious disease.
Other diseases have declined thanks to vaccines, and today many are almost gone in the US. A few examples of more-recent vaccines saving lives are Meningitis and Rotavirus, and the HPV vaccine is helping to prevent cancer. New vaccines are always in the works, such as for HIV.
Experts have concluded that the use of vaccines has prevented and will continue to prevent tens of thousands of deaths and spare millions of episodes of disease in children and other vulnerable populations in the US alone.
We should not let time blur memories of the devastation caused by disease in the days before vaccines. The fight against our current pandemic, COVID-19, has shown how important it is to agree to develop, promote, and provide vaccines to the world to improve health and save lives.
myHealth in the News December 8, 2021
Winter Asthma Control December 8, 2021
Learning More About Vaccines June 28, 2021
Why Are Vaccines Important June 24, 2021
6 Tips for Adjusting to College Dorm Life May 6, 2021
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