Bulgarians are showing more interest in flu vaccines, and that is a good thing, Prof. Todor Kantardzhiev said on the BNT show "The Day Begins". Influenza B was confirmed for the first time this week at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.
Vaccines are available, but the professor says it is good for a person to have some connection when getting vaccinated.
"There should be no panic. People need to get immunised. There is time," Kantardzhiev told BNT.
Protection does not start right after the shot. It is almost full after two weeks and complete after three.
Kantardzhiev says the viruses that hit the upper airways are changing. Adenoviruses have gone because they are typical of the warm season, while parainfluenza viruses have risen sharply.
The professor says probiotics must be alive and settle in the digestive system, not just be imported and sold.
"If they are not alive, they are not probiotics but postbiotics," Kantardzhiev said. He added that postbiotics leave the body as they went in, but are also useful.
Yeasts, whose cell walls contain mannans, polymannans and glucans, are among the best immune modulators, the professor said. In the right dose they do not overload the immune system or its separate branches, unlike some medicines brought in from exotic places, he said.
He also recommended natural pickles. As an example, he named green tomatoes fermented in large clay pots. He says they are a very good immune modulator and good food. Two hundred years ago, people in Bulgaria pickled green tomatoes, not tomatoes with pesto.
Now is the time to put up cabbage for those who want sarmi, or stuffed cabbage rolls, for Christmas, Kantardzhiev added.
The professor says Bulgarian lukanka and sudzhuk sausages ripen with lactobacilli, which keep them stable, and are tastier and healthier than Western salamis.