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Immunizations

Immunizations

You might think that immunizations are something you get as a child, but you need boosters as you get older and could need additional vaccines for your career or travel. At Westbrook Wellness Internal Medicine in Westchester, Illinois, Dr. Asha Thomas screens to make sure you’re up-to-date with your required immunizations and makes recommendations if you need other vaccines.

Protecting Your Health

Immunizations play a vital role in preventing serious illnesses and protecting long-term wellness. We offer age-appropriate vaccines in a safe, convenient setting to keep you and your family protected. Our team ensures timely, up-to-date immunizations tailored to your individual health needs.

All Your Questions Answered

What are immunizations?

An immunization — also commonly referred to as a vaccine — is a preventive health treatment. Dr. Thomas introduced a minute and diluted amount of a virus to your body, usually through a shot, so that your body’s immune system can build up antibodies to fight it off. The antibodies stay in your body, so if you come into contact with the virus in the future, your body can fight it off without making you sick.
Immunizations protect you from dangerous diseases that have severe, long-lasting effects like infertility, paralysis, or even premature death. As recently as the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of cases of diseases like polio and measles led to hospitalization, and in many cases, death. The introduction of vaccines more or less eradicated these illnesses from your community. Today, many doctors have never had to treat a patient for measles. In addition to protecting yourself and your family, staying up to date with your vaccines also helps keep your community healthy. Some people legitimately can’t have certain vaccines because of severe allergies, neurological conditions, or immunologic diseases. They’re kept safe from illness because everyone around them is immunized and the disease can’t spread.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) publishes a list of vaccine recommendations. During the first 18 years of your life, you should have had the following vaccines:
  • Hepatitis A and B
  • Rotavirus
  • Diphtheria
  • Tetanus
  • Acellular pertussis
  • Polio
  • Measles
  • Mumps
  • Rubella
  • Varicella
  • Meningococcal
  • Pneumococcal polysaccharide and conjugate
  • Flu
  • HPV
The vaccines you need as an adult depends on your lifestyle, including your career and where you choose to travel. Many of the vaccines you need as a child require boosters later in life. For example, you should have your tetanus shot every ten years. It’s also important to have a flu shot every year. The flu virus mutates rapidly, which means that a new vaccine is needed every year to protect you and your family from the illness. Dr. Thomas provides screening services to check the level of antibodies for specific diseases and suggests booster immunizations to extend your protection.