Can You Get Too Many Vaccines? – Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Welcome to Paging Dr. Gupta. Thanks so much for joining us. I’ve come to think of this time as my office hours, a place I really look forward to hearing from you, hopefully answering your questions no matter how big or small, and we’re gonna be doing this every week. So let’s get straight to the first question.

‘Hi Sanjay, my name is Maggie, and I’m calling from Montreal, Canada. Thank you for your show. The topics are always of interest and your show is always number one on my list. My question is regarding creatine, but specifically, hydracreatine. I’m a 55-year-old postmenopausal woman, and I wanted to know if the claims about it providing benefits to our brains — and helping cognitive fatigue and improving bone health — [are] true. And, should I consider taking this? Thank you for considering my questions, and have a great day.

‘Maggie, thanks so much for that message. How kind. And I am delighted to try and humbly answer your question as best I can. First of all, creatine. Let’s start with the basics here. This is all the rage. A lot of people are talking about it. It is not an amino acid, but it is a compound that comes from three amino acids. So it’s arginine, glycine, and methionine. Arginine. Glycine. Methionine Creatine is sometimes thought of as an amino acid itself, but technically, again, it is not. It is not one of the 20 amino acids that are the building blocks of all proteins, okay? So there are 20 amino acid that make up all your proteins. Creatine, is not one of them, but again, is a compound that sort of is derived from three of them. It is fundamentally used by your body for energy, and it’s mostly found in your body’s muscles, but also in your brain. Now the way that your body gets it: One way is your body can make a small amount of creatine. It does this in the liver and the kidneys and to some extent in the pancreas. You can also get it from the food that you eat, seafood, red meat — though to be clear, at levels far below those found in synthetically made creatine supplements. And I think this gets to the heart of your question. So Maggie, when you ask whether you should consider taking hydrocreatine, for example, it sounds like you’re probably talking about creatine hydrochloride. One of the many different formulations of creatine supplements. When it comes to creatine hydrochloride, the claims are that it has better bioavailability, meaning you take it, and it’s more easily distributed throughout your body, more easily absorbed, might lead to less weight gain as compared to the most common creatine formulation, which is creatine monohydrate. But, you know, creatine hydrochoride is typically more expensive because it is somewhat newer. It has not been as extensively studied as creatine monohydrate. There haven’t been many studies comparing them head-to-head. So it’s hard to give a straight answer on whether or not one of those is better than the other. But when it comes to creatine monohydrate, the creatine that I think is more common, it is one of the most studied supplements out there. Some studies have shown that it could have benefits including improved performance during cognitive tasks, improved exercise performance, improved muscle performance. Creatine supplementation — and this is important — but creatine supplementation in and of itself does not build muscle, but because it is used by yourselves to produce energy, it might allow you to work out harder, work out longer. So you might gain muscle when it is paired with good workouts and a well-balanced diet, making sure of course, that you’re adding resistance training, like weightlifting and sprinting. At any age, Maggie, at any age, You should be doing resistance exercises as much as you can tolerate and slowly building up. And yeah, maybe that even means sprinting every now and then instead of just jogging or fast walking, just throwing in some sprints, throwing in resistance exercises. My wife and I talk about this all the time. If you can start to lift some weights and you supplement that with creatine, supplement that a well-balanced diet, that’s when you start to gain that muscle that can really make you look lean and fit. Now, Maggie, you mentioned that you were post-menopausal. I think it’s important to point out that some women experience what is known as sarcopenia post-menopausal, meaning you start to lose muscle mass. The loss of muscle mass and the corresponding power, that happens as we grow older. But it also happens when muscles are not activated, such as after an injury, or just because you start to let your workout programs falter. Creatine supplements, along with resistance training, can help offset that sarcopenia, which could potentially help with your bone mass and bone strength. If you’re going to use it, do check with your doctor, at least mention to your doctor to make sure you don’t have any contraindications. The general recommendations are 3 to 5 grams per day. Studies show that a higher dose of creatine probably does not offer an advantage. You might in fact be putting more stress on your kidneys. Two things, and these are really important. Despite extensive research on creatine, and again, it is one of the more studied supplements out there, although admittedly it is hard to do really good quality studies on supplements. But despite the research that exists, evidence for use among females, including postmenopausal females, is understudied. So we just don’t have as much data on that. We aren’t sure how it might affect your health long-term, or again, which formulation, hydrochloride or monohydrate, is going to be better. And, keep in mind, Maggie, that the FDA, at least in the United States, does not regulate dietary supplements like creatine in the same way that it regulates prescription medications or even over-the-counter medications. So it is possible that the supplement you buy does not match what it says on the label. And the supplement might contain other ingredients or contaminants that could potentially be harmful for you. So you’ve got to buy these things from a really reputable source. That’s really important. Make sure the bottle has some seal of approval. From a third party, like USP or NSF. Maggie, thanks again for your very kind message. Means the world to me, and I hope my answer helps you. When we come back, how much is too much when it comes to vaccines and our bodies? We’re back and joining us is my producer, Kyra. Kyra, what do we have?

Hey, Sanjay. So childhood vaccines have really been on a lot of people’s minds lately, just given the recent headlines and news. So our next question is coming from Riggan in Bentonville, Arkansas. And he’s asking about vaccine safety and, specifically, wanting to know if there are any studies that have looked at the total load of all recommended childhood vaccines.

‘Thanks, Kyra. And yes, Riggan. A really important question, a common question. I think what Riggan is fundamentally asking about is the total load or the total number of substances that elicit an immune response when a child takes the vaccines. And I think the implicit concern here is that, look, my kid’s getting a lot of shots. Could all those vaccines overwhelm the immune system? I get it. Again, I hear this question a lot from lots of people in our neighborhood even. There are studies that look at this. So that’s the first thing you should know. Peer-reviewed journals, pediatrics, Journal of the American Medical Association, they don’t support the hypothesis that multiple vaccines overwhelm the immune system. What matters more is not so much the number of vaccines, but the number of immunological components known as antigens. Think about this: Antigens are what stimulate the body to make antibodies, which help fight off an infection, help fight off something, if it encounters it in the future. Vaccines have these antigens in them. In the case of virus vaccines, it’s usually viral proteins. In the cases of bacterial vaccines, it is bacterial proteins. If you add up all the immunological components that are in vaccines today, it’s around 180, and that targets around 15 diseases. To give you some important context, back in the 80s and 90s, the amount of immunological components was closer to 3,000. And at that point, it was targeting around eight or nine diseases. So, you know, it’s just over 5 percent in terms of immunologic load today versus in the 80s or 90s. So despite the fact that kids are getting more shots for more diseases, the overall antigen load, immunologic loads on the body is much smaller than it used to be. In part, the reason is because we have become better as a society at purifying the proteins that make these antigens, so you don’t have to give as much of an antigen load. In the past, people might’ve even received live virus as part of a vaccine. Nowadays, that is very unlikely to happen. The one vaccine, smallpox, had about 200 when it came to this immunological load. Again, today’s vaccine’s in totality closer to 180. We can make purer, safer vaccines, thanks to advances in technology, such as that protein purification. So again, I hope that helps answer the question. I understand the concern. My kid’s getting so many shots. What’s that doing to their immune system? It’s a very fair question to ask, but part of the reason I wanted to give you the context of what things used to be like 40, 50 years ago is because you realize that the immunological load from all the vaccines today is not even 10 percent, just over 5 percent of what it used to be. That’s all we have for today. Thank you so much for calling. Thank you so much for writing in. Thanks so much for joining us in my office hours on Paging Dr. Gupta. I really do love hearing from you all. You can send in your questions, maybe hear the answer right here. Just leave a voice memo and email it to asksanjay@cnn.com or give us a call the old fashioned way, 470-396-0832. Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Eryn Mathewson, Jennifer Lai, Grace Walker, Lori Galarreta, Jesse Remedios, Sofia Sanchez, and Kyra Dahring. Andrea Kane is our medical writer. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Amanda Sealey is our showrunner. Dan Dzula is our technical director. And the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. With support from Jamus Andrest, Jon Dianora, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Leni Steinhardt, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Ben Tinker and Nadia Kounang of CNN Health, and Wendy Brundige.