Other than the flu vaccine, which we hear about every year, most people think that vaccines are for the younger crowd from newborns to teens but not older adults. After all, by the time we reach adulthood, we’ve had most of the diseases associated with growing up. How many adults do you know that have gotten sick with a so-called childhood disease?

My father-in-law had the chickenpox several times as an adult and was told he could well be reproductively sterile. Thank goodness the doctors were wrong because he was 48 when he fathered his third child, who grew up and whom I married 48 years ago.

If you have followed any of the news this year, you probably heard about the measles outbreak that has swept through many states here in America. Many of the cases reported were for people college age and older.

Most of us were vaccinated when we were kids, but over time, many of those old vaccines no longer protect many of us. In some instances, the current versions of the disease have mutated enough that make them immune to the safeguards provided by those vaccines from years ago. In other cases, immune systems weaken for various reasons as people age which makes them more susceptible to getting sick. In other cases, people were just never vaccinated when they were young.

A growing number of health experts and doctors are now recommending that older adults receive 4 key vaccines. Those are:

1. Flu vaccine – For many many years, influenza has sickened, hospitalized and killed tens of thousands of older adults. One source reports that from 2010 to 2016, 12,000 – 56,000 people died each year from the flu and many of them were seniors.
2. Pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine – According to the CDC, about 900,000 Americans become ill with pneumococcal pneumonia with around 400,000 requiring hospitalization. Of these, 90% are adults and about 3,700 die each year from this deadly disease.
3. TDAP – tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis While we rarely hear about tetanus, it does happen, often as a result of a cut or scratch. About 1 of every 10 people contracting tetanus die. Diphtheria is also not as common as it used to be, largely due to vaccinations, but you need to know that diphtheria can lead to breathing problems, heart failure, paralysis and death. Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, brings on a severe cough that can lead to broken and cracked ribs, vomiting, breathing problems and more.
4. Shingles – caused by the same virus (varicella-zoster virus – VZV) that causes chickenpox. If you had chickenpox as a child, did you know that the virus can survive in you for many years? About 1 in every 3 adults who had the VZV in their youth, can find the virus become active again many years later. Instead of causing chickenpox, it causes shingles. While my father-in-law did have the chickenpox 3 times, he did had shingles on his face in his senior years. The older a person gets, the more likely they are to have an outbreak of shingles.

Besides getting vaccinated to preserve one’s health as they get older, there is another important reason to get vaccinated that many are unaware of. It’s called herding protection. By getting vaccinated, it helps prevent one from infecting someone else with the disease. It’s not uncommon for a grandparent to infect and grandchild with the whooping cough or pneumonia, whereas, if they had been vaccinated, that infecting of young grandchildren becomes far less likely.

So, even if you are in relatively good health. You may want to consider getting these important vaccines, if you haven’t already, to protect your family and friends, especially those precious little ones.