Precautions and dietary taboos after rabies vaccination

After vaccination, you must stay in the hospital for observation for 30 minutes to prevent acute allergies. Avoid contact with dirty water for 24 hours at the needle tip. In your diet and daily activities, you only need to avoid foods that you are clearly allergic to and behaviors that will cause discomfort. Most of the online requirements about not eating spicy food, not drinking coffee, and not exercising are outdated and do not need to be followed blindly.

Let’s talk about the observation request that is most easily ignored. Last year, I accompanied my cousin to a community hospital to get vaccinated. She found it boring to sit there and wait for half an hour. After the vaccination, she was about to leave with her bag, but she was grabbed by the nurse - it was not that the nurse was looking for trouble. After all, the rabies vaccine is an allogeneic protein, and very few people will show up. An acute allergic reaction can range from a large wheal that makes you unable to sit still to a severe case of laryngeal edema and difficulty breathing. 30 minutes is the golden time to deal with it. If there is a problem, the clinic is equipped with epinephrine and anti-allergic drugs. You can save it in two minutes. If you have to run home to have the attack, no one can make up for the time lost on the road.

As for the care of the needle site, it is simpler. Just don't touch dirty water for 24 hours. Don't go to hot springs, bathe, or even go swimming in public swimming pools right after the injection. My colleague didn't believe in evil before. He went swimming for 1 kilometer on the day after the injection. The next day, his lipstick was like a peach. The swelling took almost a week to go away. It was either an infection or irritation from the disinfectant in the water. He suffered for nothing and was completely unworthy of his fault.

The dietary taboos that everyone is most confused about, in fact, there are no unified hard requirements in the industry at all, and both sides of the argument have basis. The older generation of doctors told you to avoid spicy food, wine, and seafood because the early rabies vaccines had low purity and a high incidence of adverse reactions. Eating these pungent foods may aggravate the symptoms of fever, swelling and pain at the needle site. In order to save trouble, just let everyone avoid it. But now we mostly use Vero cell-purified vaccines, and the purity has long been mentioned. The 2021 domestically updated "Rabies Exposure Prevention and Treatment Work Standards" and the WHO's Rabies Vaccination Guidelines do not mention any dietary taboos - to put it bluntly, as long as you are not allergic to certain foods and will not feel uncomfortable after eating them, you can eat whatever you should. Oh, by the way, some people asked if they could drink coffee or milk tea after the injection. As long as you don't suffer from insomnia and panic after drinking it, it's totally fine. I also drank two glasses of iced Americano on the day I got the second injection, and it was fine. When I received my third injection, I happened to be on a business trip in Chengdu. Every meal was hot pot with red oil and ice powder. Apart from my arm being sore for two days after the injection, I had no adverse reactions. Later, I tested for antibodies and found that the concentration was very high. But that doesn’t mean I encourage you to drink a pound of white wine right after the shot. If you have a headache after drinking, or you already have a low fever or an upset stomach after the shot, there is no harm in taking it easy for two days. There is no need to bear the burden of eating spicy food and drinking alcohol to make yourself suffer.

It is also said online that strenuous exercise is not allowed, which is the same reason. The old advice was that strenuous exercise would increase the burden on the body and make adverse reactions more obvious. For example, if the injection site is your arm and you practice bench pressing right after the injection, it will definitely be too painful to lift. However, if you are not uncomfortable, it is perfectly fine to go for a run and play badminton. There is a horse racing enthusiast next to me. He ran a half-marathon the next day after receiving the second injection. Apart from being a little more tired than usual, nothing happened. Of course, if you stay up all night playing games to keep yourself healthy, you will easily develop a fever even if you don’t get the vaccine. Don’t rely on the vaccine for everything.

Don’t panic if you really feel uncomfortable after the injection. Your body temperature does not exceed 38.5℃, but you are just a little tired and dizzy. Drinking more warm water and lying down for half a day will basically relieve the pain. If the fever reaches above 38.5℃, or you have a large rash on your body and you can’t breathe, don’t take medicine blindly. Just go to the hospital and see a doctor. There are also many people who ask whether they should go through the whole process to test for antibodies. To be honest, as long as you get the qualified vaccine at a regular institution and complete the whole process on time, 99.9% of people can produce enough antibodies. Only those who have been taking immunosuppressants for a long time and have immune deficiencies need to be tested. The hundreds of dollars spent by ordinary people are a complete waste.

I myself received a full rabies vaccine twice. The first time was ten years ago. The doctor warned me not to eat spicy food or drink tea. I endured it for a month and my mouth was full of rabies. The second time, the doctor directly said that there was nothing to avoid and that I could do whatever I wanted. To put it bluntly, current vaccine technology has advanced a long time ago, and many old taboos have long been outdated. There is no need to scare yourself. If you are really unsure about anything, it is much more reliable to ask the nurse or doctor who gave you the injection directly than to search for messy information on the Internet.