Vaccines can be a hot topic, but once we hit our 40s, there are a few that can make a real difference in protecting our long-term health. You’ve heard about flu shots and COVID boosters, but what about shingles, pneumonia, or even HPV after 40?

In this episode of The Grown-Ass Woman’s Guide, host Jackie MacDougall talks with Dr. Kudzai Dombo, a board-certified OB/GYN and menopause expert, and physician at Alloy Women's Health, about which vaccines matter most for women in midlife and beyond.

You’ll learn:

• Which vaccines women over 40 should consider and when to get them

• What you need to know about shingles, pneumonia, and HPV

• How to tell which vaccines are essential and which are optional

• How to check your immunity with bloodwork before getting vaccinated

• What to consider based on travel, health history, and lifestyle

Whether you’re navigating perimenopause, protecting your immune system, or just want to understand what’s really necessary at this stage of life, this episode breaks it all down in clear, practical terms.

Download our FREE Grown-Ass Woman's Health Cheat Sheet

It includes a full list of vaccines, screenings, and labs every woman over 40 should know about.

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Vaccines can be a hot-button topic, but once we hit our 40s, there are some important ones we at least need to know about. Sure, you've heard about the flu shots and Covid boosters, but what about shingles, pneumonia, or even HPV after 40?

In this episode, we're breaking down which vaccines matter, when to get them, and what questions to ask before you roll up your sleeve. Welcome back to the Grown-Ass Woman's guide. I'm Jackie MacDougall.

Today I'm joined once again by Dr. Kudzai Dombo, a board-certified OB/GYN and menopause expert with over 20 years of experience dedicated to women's health.

Today, we'll break down which vaccines are recommended at different stages of life, what's essential, what's optional, and how to decide what's right for you. Before we get into it, a quick disclaimer. Vaccines may or may not be for you. That's cool. Don't come for me. All right, cool. So let's get into it.

What vaccines should women over 40 really be thinking about, and when do they matter most?

So I look at what are some of the easy ones to get out of the way for women who are 40 and over, because as we get older, there are other ones that come into play. So when I think of women who are in their 40s, we usually say the yearly influenza vaccine. So it's a flu shot. It's meant to be specific to the strains that are particular to that particular flu season. Right. So the reason why it's recommended yearly is because it's very specific to the strains.

There's another vaccine called the Tdap, which is tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis. And that's good.

Every 10 years, we're really looking at, I mean, if you get scraped on a rusty nail, if you have some kind of injury, it's really important to have the coverage for tetanus and then diphtheria and pertussis.

Pertussis is another condition that we look at the numbers of people who have pertussis, and especially when it comes to protection against babies, just having it every 10 years is what the guidelines recommend. And then we look at COVID-19. It's really up to the CDC and what their recommendations are. They're changing, I think, daily and monthly now.

So it just at this point, you know, I think a lot of the organizations have left how often you get a booster up to what the CDC recommendations say. And then shingles, we say at age 50, and that's a vaccine; that's two doses, and they're two to six months apart.

The pneumococcal vaccine is something, and usually that's at age 65. And we're really looking at protecting women at this stage against pneumonia.

And then we're also looking at, I think we had talked about the HPV vaccine, which is routine until age 26. If you haven't had it up until then, we really say up until age 45 is when we're recommending it.

Recently there was an exposure of measles and I don't have any idea when I had a measles vaccine. So are there some that we've had as young people, children even, that we should consider getting another dose of or anything like that?

So when it comes to the MMR, which is the measles, mumps and rubella, what tends to happen is, and I know, at least for those of us in the healthcare system who are exposed,front line when, you know, they bring in sick patients, sometimes when we get privileged at different hospitals, they're looking at our titers. So what they do is they draw our blood, and they check to see if you are still immune.

And if the blood work shows that we're immune, then we do not need it.

So I think it's really, it may be worth, especially with the measles outbreaks that have been happening, asking your doctor to check and see, "Hey, you know, can I check for immunity so that I can know whether or not I need measles, mumps, and rubella revaccination?" But really, if you have immunity, you do not need to get revaccinated.

And so would that just be added to the blood work that you're having done anyway, asking for the titer?

Yep, absolutely.Or if you have the antibodies, you know, still circulating because they say for you to be immune, your antibodies have to be within a certain range. Okay, yeah, very cool. There are two others, and some get this earlier: Hepatitis B and Hepatitis A. Hepatitis A is based on your travel history and risk factors. Right.

So if you know you're going to be traveling to certain countries where there may be a higher incidence of Hep A because of reduced, you know, cleanliness or water supply. That's something to consider, but again, it's really based on your travel history as well as any risk factors you may have.

And then Hepatitis B is usually recommended for all people aged between 19 and 59.

That wraps up this episode and this four-part series with Dr. Kudzai Dambo. We covered screenings, labs, hormones, supplements, and now vaccines. To make it simple, I've pulled everything we talked about into one Grown Ass Woman's Health Cheat Sheet.

It's your quick reference for what to ask, when to check, and how to show up for your health over 40. You can download it using the link wherever you are listening or watching. If you know another grown-ass woman who could use this, please send her this episode. It might be exactly what she needs right now. I'm Jackie MacDougall and this is the Grown-Ass Woman's Guide. Until next time, you are a grown-ass woman, act accordingly.