Did You Give Your Child The Vitamin K Shot?

There are risks to skipping it. Hemorrhaging babies being the most gnarly.

Good morning everyone.

I hope you all had a terrific Fourth of July. I spent America’s 250th birthday in Washington, D.C., which was exciting in some respects and saddening in others—namely because I couldn’t be in northern Idaho, where my brother Elisha hosted what looked like a killer cookout and a fiddle contest of sorts.

Lucky for them I wasn’t at the competition. Fortunately for the country, given my proximity to POTUS, I was instead able to lend my expertise on Middle East foreign policy, which is why we’re bombing Iran again.

There I was in the Situation Room advising, “Mr. President, we’ve gotta strike while we can.”

Needless to say, my Raytheon stock is looking great.

Now let’s get to some health news.

In today’s letter:

• Vitamin K shot for newborns (y/n)

• Creatine’s anti-cancer potential

• Bryan Johnson’s quest to live forever hits an autoimmune road block

• Lionel Messi x ROB collab (?)

• Protein ice cream

• An Idaho mother who publicly claimed her 18-month-old twins died from vaccines is now being charged with their murders.

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“They’ll say it’s a one-in-a-million bleeding risk,” said Dr. Annemarie Stroustrup, the senior vice president of pediatric services at Northwell Health, a large health care network in New York and Connecticut where several infants have hemorrhaged in the past two years. “It’s decidedly not.”

The New York Times ran a piece highlighting the increase in parents choosing not to give their newborns vitamin K shots, which are essential for blood clotting. If a newborn begins to bleed, things can get dicey scary, and sometimes, fatal. But many parents are choosing to opt out of the shot, citing concerns about the ingredients it contains.

I genuinely see why some parents choose not to give the shot, either opting out altogether or choosing an oral form of vitamin K instead. But reading these stories in the Times—very graphic, very sad—was sobering. I understand that the story is meant to make us scared, and honestly, it accomplished that.

Sometimes in the holistic health space, it’s said that we shouldn’t make decisions out of fear. That we should trust our intuition and trust the body. Again, I understand the heart behind this, and I generally agree. But I can’t sign off on it as a life motto for major medical decisions. Sometimes fear should be the deciding factor.