by Chet Day
Reprinted with permission from Chet Day's Health & Beyond

Every year about this time, quite a few people write me and ask, "My Doctor tells me to get my annual flu shot. Should I do it?"

Well, I don't diagnose or prescribe, and what you do with your body remains entirely up to you and your doctor (if you still go to a doctor), but I'll gladly tell you what I do regarding flu shots...

I avoid them like the plague.

In fact, at age 52, I've never had a flu shot, and it would take a Marine nurse and at least four burly wrestlers the size of Jessie Ventura to hold me down and give me one.

Perhaps you already sense I have strong feelings about flu shots?

These feelings stem from personal opinion, reading, and dramatic personal experience.

First off, I don't think toxic chemicals and virus strains grown on living tissue belong in the human body, even when they're packaged in sterile glass vials.

Since my family and I don't rely on doctors anymore, I don't have access to an insert that reveals the composition of this year's flu vaccine, but I did find some general information at a concerned parents web site, where I learned about some of the ingredients used to make vaccines.

Do you want any of the following vaccine constituents in YOUR bloodstream?

• Ethylene glycol (antifreeze)

• Phenol, also known as carbolic acid (this is used as a disinfectant, dye)

• Formaldehyde, a known cancer-causing agent

• Aluminum, which is associated with Alzheimer's disease and seizures and also cancer producing in laboratory mice (it is used as an additive to promote antibody response)

• Thimerosal (a mercury disinfectant/preservative) can result in brain injury and autoimmune disease

• Neomycin and Streptomycin (used as antibiotics) have caused allergic reaction in some people.

Vaccines are also grown and strained through animal or human tissue like monkey kidney tissue, chicken embryo, embryonic guinea pig cells, calf serum, and human diploid cells (the dissected organs of aborted human fetuses as in the case of rubella, hepatitis A, and chickenpox vaccines).

Well, I refuse to put all of the above in my body, and I hope when your doctor starts telling you it's time for your annual flu shot that you'll require him to defend the annual injection. You or your insurance company's probably paying eighty bucks for a visit, so get your money's worth.

Have your doctor read you the insert that comes with the vaccine.

Then have him/her explain why it makes sense to inject toxic chemicals into the human body and how such substances can aid the delicate immune system.

Chances are he/she will fall back on questionable statistical and demographic explanations that the medical establishment has used for decades to justify immunization.

Try to engage your doctor in a non-confrontational discussion because this is an opportunity for him/her to actually give some serious thought to what he/she is injecting into bodies of patients day after day after day.

Many traditional doctors who haven't studied diet and lifestyle aren't going to change unless we help to educate them to what drugs and vaccines may really be doing long-term to people.

Okay, to speak from personal experience for a moment, let's look over our shoulders to 1990, a time period before the Day family turned to natural methods of building health.

In February of 1990, right after my wife's major cancer surgery in January, her doctor recommended a flu shot.

Almost immediately after the injection, my wife started feeling ill.

Overnight she came down with the worst case of flu she'd ever had.

She went to bed and literally didn't get up again for more than a few hours at a time for years afterwards. Only now, almost a decade later, is she finally regaining full health and energy.

I don't have space or enough heart yet to tell my wife's entire story,

Okay, I'm a realist so if was still thinking traditionally, part of me would almost buy into the typical rationale for flu vaccines, that so many people are spared the annual flu and only a few die or have their lives ruined after being injected.

I'd buy into that if I were convinced that injecting a filthy substance into the body actually made sense.

Unfortunately, once I stopped buying into the big medical lies about their drug, cut, and burn system, I started questioning all of it.

And when one digs into the vaccine history (check out the Swine Flu vaccine if you want a real horror story) and scientific research (especially in Europe), it quickly becomes apparent that nobody really knows what these toxic stews of chemicals and microorganisms do in the human body.

Well, readers and a few medical professionals have called me a simple-minded dolt on more than one occasion, but since 1993 I've approached the yearly flu shot hype with the understanding that if I eat and live properly, I won't have to worry about catching the flu.

The flu vaccine I use -- eating and living as close to nature as I can -- actually works.

Not only that, but it doesn't cost a dime, and nobody's going to have his/her life ruined because of a "bad batch" of vaccine that triggers some mysterious autoimmune disease that lays a person out of commission for years.

But let's say you don't want to eat and live close to nature.

Okay, I can understand that, but my next question would be "Which is better? Some rest time with the flu or having toxic chemicals injected into your bloodstream?"

I mean, seriously, before I got healthy I almost looked forward to a yearly bout with influenza because it meant I could go to bed and get some rest instead of working practically every waking moment of my life.

I might add that I haven't missed more than two consecutive days of work from an illness for almost five years, so a non-vaccine approach does work for me. This non-drug approach has resulted in a level of health that continually amazes me, especially when I see other men and women my age who are miserable and without energy. Men and women who spend all too much of their time drifting from doctor to doctor in endless pursuit of solutions that don't get to the cause of their problems -- diet and life style.