This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here.

We may not have flying cars or hoverboards yet, but in some ways we truly live in the incredible future. For a trip or two

to a health care professional and a nominal amount of money, if any, out of pocket, we can prevent

ourselves from getting sick. Vaccines are considered the most successful medical advancement

in the history of public health. Before vaccinations,

diseases like smallpox, polio, and rebella, killed or paralyzed or caused serious birth defects

regularly. These losses of life and types of suffering are now preventable with extremely

small risk.

A person born in the United States in the year 1900 had an average life expectancy of 47 years.

As of 2010, it was 78 years.

That's not because most adults never reached old age in the past.

It's because babies and toddlers died way more often of diseases that we now vaccinate against. So today, let's talk about vaccines and the basic science behind how

they prevent illness. We'll also go head to head with some of the common myths about vaccines.

Vaccines work based on the fact that once a person has caught a disease of some types, they'll probably be immune to that disease for the rest of their

life. For example, once you've had chickenpox, it's extremely unlikely that you'll ever catch it again.

This is because your body will recognize the disease

and fight it off. This happens thanks to a process called the immune response. The beauty of

vaccines is that they help your body develop these disease recognizing abilities without you

needing to get sick in the first place.

Here's how the immune response works.

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