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Dr. Sunny Sharma, 1555 Barrington Road/Doctor's Building 1/Suite 310, Hoffman Estates, IL (2026)

08/14/2026

Beliefs that will make you follow—or unfollow me. 👀

After a lot of conversations lately about vaccines, science, nutrition, prevention, medications, wellness trends and what it actually means to practice evidence-based medicine, I figured I’d put my cards on the table.

These are six things I believe:

🧠 EVIDENCE > VIBES.
I’ll take the best available evidence over anecdotes, algorithms and whoever has the biggest following.

💉 VACCINES SAVE LIVES.
They aren’t perfect, no medical intervention is. But the benefits and risks should be evaluated honestly, using evidence—not fear, politics or misinformation.

❤️ PREVENTION > REACTION.
Preventing disease is almost always preferable to waiting until we’re sick and trying to undo the damage.

🥦 FIBER IS MEDICINE.
Beans, lentils, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds may not come with flashy marketing campaigns, but plant-forward nutrition is one of the most powerful tools we have for long-term health.

🔬 SCIENCE IS SUPPOSED TO CHANGE.
When better evidence comes along, we should update our conclusions. That’s not weakness. That’s how science works.

🌱 LIFESTYLE IS POWERFUL MEDICINE.
Plant-forward nutrition. Exercise. Sleep. Social connection. Mindfulness. Avoiding risky substances. These aren’t “alternative” to medicine—they ARE medicine.

And one more thing:

Being evidence-based doesn’t mean blindly following guidelines.

It means understanding the evidence, recognizing its limitations, weighing benefits and risks, using clinical judgment, and treating the person sitting in front of you—not an average patient in a textbook—as an individual.

I’m not interested in telling people what they want to hear.

I’m interested in helping people make better-informed decisions and live healthier, longer lives.

If those beliefs make you want to follow me, welcome. ❤️

If they make you want to unfollow me… I promise I’ll be okay. 😂

More Than a Doctor.

08/12/2026

VACCINES CAUSE ADULTS.

Well… more accurately:

Vaccines help create healthy adults.

And that’s the part of the vaccine conversation I think we sometimes forget.

Childhood vaccines aren’t simply about preventing a few days of fever or keeping kids out of school.

They’re about preventing serious infectious diseases, hospitalization, complications, disability and premature death — giving children the opportunity to grow up and become adults.

And the numbers are staggering.

For children born in the U.S. between 1994 and 2023, routine childhood vaccination is estimated to prevent approximately:

508 MILLION illnesses
32 MILLION hospitalizations
1.129 MILLION deaths

over their lifetimes. (CDC)

That’s what successful public health looks like.

And vaccination isn’t something we simply “age out” of.

Adults continue to need vaccines based on age, health conditions and other risk factors. Influenza, COVID-19, pneumococcal disease, shingles, RSV, pertussis, HPV, hepatitis B, MMR and others can all be relevant throughout different stages of life. (CDC)

Because prevention isn’t just about avoiding an infection.

It’s about preventing morbidity.
Mortality.
Hospitalization.
Disability.
Complications.
Premature death.

And protecting quality of life.

The irony of prevention is that when it works, you don’t see what happened.

You don’t see the hospitalization that never occurred.

The disability that never developed.

The infection that never became deadly.

The life that wasn’t cut short.

You just see someone growing up.

Going to work.

Raising a family.

Traveling.

Playing with their grandchildren.

Growing older.

Living.

That’s the goal.

Not simply more years of life.

More healthy years of life.

So yes…

Vaccines cause adults.

And I want more of those adults to be healthy ones. ❤️

08/12/2026

For those that are free, catch me on NBC Chicago at 9 am talking about back to school tips!

UPDATE: They just called to inform me that because of some breaking news due to the weather they have to reschedule my interview. I will keep everyone posted for when things get rescheduled.

08/11/2026

🚨 AN EXECUTIVE ORDER IS NOT MEDICAL EVIDENCE.

So many of you asked me yesterday to explain Trump’s new executive order on childhood vaccines and what it could mean for families.

Here’s the bottom line:

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ vaccine schedule is built on science. Families deserve facts—not fear.

The order would:

❌ Reduce routine recommendations for all children from 17 diseases to 11.

❌ Move vaccines including flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A/B, RSV and certain meningococcal vaccines away from universal recommendations.

❌ Push vaccines toward separate visits.

❌ Split MMR into separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines.

And autism was repeatedly invoked.

Let’s be clear:

There is NO credible evidence that vaccines cause autism.

Not MMR. Not combination vaccines. Not vaccines given together.

This has been studied for decades.

And splitting MMR creates real-world problems.

Instead of 2 visits for the 2-dose MMR series, separating measles, mumps and rubella could mean 6 visits.

That’s more injections, more appointments, more time off work, more opportunities for delays or missed doses, and more time children may remain vulnerable to preventable disease.

There’s also an irony here.

Many advocates complain about vaccine ingredients, pharmaceutical companies and unnecessary medical intervention.

Yet splitting a combination vaccine means more individual vaccine products and more healthcare visits.

So I have a simple question:

Where is the evidence that this makes children safer?

An executive order isn’t a clinical trial, safety study or systematic review.

It’s a policy document.

Parents: ask questions. Demand evidence. Talk to your pediatrician.

I’m a physician. I’m a parent.

**An executive order can change policy.

It cannot change biology.

It cannot rewrite decades of evidence.

And it cannot turn a claim into a fact.**

Please share this with a parent who deserves the facts. ❤️

08/10/2026

The best part of weight loss isn’t always the number on the scale.

Sometimes it’s watching blood pressure improve.

A1c come down.

Cholesterol improve.

Sleep apnea get better.

And yes… sometimes watching the medication list get SHORTER. 👀

That’s one of my favorite parts of Lifestyle Medicine.

The goal isn’t to make people dependent on an endless list of medications OR to pretend medications are bad.

The goal is to use every effective tool we have — nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, social connection, medications when appropriate — to help people become healthier.

And when someone’s health improves enough that we can safely reduce a medication?

🎶 champagnepapi has entered the chat.

That’s a win worth celebrating. 😂

08/08/2026

“mRNA vaccines change your DNA.”

I keep seeing this claim repeated with absolute confidence.

So instead of asking you to “trust the experts,” let’s do something better:

Let’s follow the biology. 🧬

Here’s what actually happens:

1️⃣ mRNA enters your cells.
It’s delivered using tiny fatty particles called lipid nanoparticles.

2️⃣ The mRNA stays in the cytoplasm.
Your DNA is stored in the nucleus. The mRNA doesn’t need to enter the nucleus to do its job.

3️⃣ Ribosomes read the mRNA.
They use those temporary instructions to make a viral protein—in the case of COVID-19 vaccines, the spike protein.

4️⃣ Your immune system responds.
Your body learns to recognize that protein and builds an immune response, including antibodies and T cells.

5️⃣ The mRNA is broken down.
The message is temporary. It doesn’t sit around permanently rewriting your cells.

Think of it this way:

🧬 DNA = the master cookbook
📝 mRNA = a temporary copy of one recipe
🏭 Ribosome = the kitchen
🍳 Protein = the finished dish

Making a temporary copy of a recipe doesn’t rewrite the cookbook.

And that’s the part that gets lost online:

DNA ≠ RNA.

They are different molecules with different jobs.

Does that mean mRNA vaccines are perfect? No.

Should we continue studying their safety and effectiveness? Absolutely.

But “we should study this” and “this vaccine rewrites your DNA” are very different claims.

One is scientific inquiry.

The other requires ignoring basic molecular biology.

You don’t have to trust me.

Understand the mechanism.

🔬 Follow the molecule.
🧬 Follow the biology.
📚 Then follow the evidence.

Save this. Share it with someone who keeps hearing that mRNA vaccines “change your DNA.”

08/07/2026

“mRNA is too new.”

I hear this all the time when people explain why they won’t get COVID-19 vaccines or the new mRNA influenza vaccines.

The problem?

mRNA isn’t new.

It may have been new to the public in 2020.

It was not new to science.

Scientists discovered messenger RNA in 1961.

For more than 60 years, researchers have studied how to use this technology to help prevent and treat disease.

The challenge was never the idea.

The challenge was delivery.

mRNA is fragile and breaks down quickly. Scientists spent decades developing ways to safely deliver it into cells.

Breakthroughs in molecular biology, chemistry, and nanotechnology eventually led to lipid nanoparticles—the technology that helped make modern mRNA vaccines possible.

By the 2010s, mRNA research was already being studied for diseases like influenza, rabies, Zika, and even cancer therapies.

Then COVID-19 arrived.

Scientists did not start from zero.

They used a platform that had been built over decades and adapted it to a new virus.

The pandemic accelerated funding, manufacturing, and access to clinical trials.

It did not create 60 years of science overnight.

Healthy skepticism matters.

Medicine needs questions.

But questions should lead us to evidence—not away from it.

The irony?

Some people call mRNA “experimental” after spending minutes reading about it online, while scientists spent decades studying the technology before it ever became a household term.

It wasn’t invented in 2020.

It was simply discovered by the public in 2020.

Science rarely begins when we first hear about it.

08/06/2026

Today feels like one of the saddest days of my career as a physician.

Not because of politics.

Because of what it means for the future of science.

Today, a Senate committee voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt.

Whether you agreed with every recommendation made during COVID-19 isn’t actually the point I’m making.

Science should be questioned.

Scientists should be accountable.

Evidence should always be challenged.

That’s exactly how science gets better.

But there’s a difference between scientific accountability and creating an environment where our brightest physician-scientists, researchers, and public health leaders decide serving the public simply isn’t worth the personal cost.

As physicians, we’re taught something many people never see from the outside: medicine is rarely practiced with perfect certainty. Every day, we make the best decisions we can with the best evidence available at that moment. When better evidence emerges, we adapt.

That isn’t weakness.

That isn’t flip-flopping.

That’s evidence-based medicine.

What worries me most isn’t what happens to one physician.

It’s what happens to the medical student considering infectious diseases.

The PhD student pursuing vaccine research.

The physician-scientist wondering whether public service is worth it.

The epidemiologist deciding whether to step into leadership during the next crisis.

Many scientists have warned that today’s climate could discourage exactly the people we’ll need when the next public health emergency arrives.

I didn’t become a doctor to defend politicians.

I became a doctor to defend patients.

And you can’t defend patients without defending evidence, the scientific method, and the people willing to dedicate their lives to both.

The next pandemic isn’t a matter of if.

It’s a matter of when.

I just hope our brightest minds are still willing to answer the call.

08/06/2026

🚨 Yesterday, the FDA approved the first mRNA influenza vaccine in the United States.

Here’s why that’s a big deal.

This isn’t exciting because it’s “mRNA.”

It’s exciting because the data are better.

A Phase 3 clinical trial enrolled 40,703 adults age 50 and older.

The results?

📉 411 cases of laboratory-confirmed influenza in the mRNA vaccine group.

📉 557 cases in the standard flu vaccine group.

✅ 26.6% greater relative efficacy compared with a licensed standard-dose flu vaccine.

It gets even better.

Among participants who developed influenza, the vaccine was associated with about a 48% reduction in more severe illness requiring hospitalization, emergency department visits, or urgent care.

So what makes this vaccine different?

Traditional flu vaccines have to be designed months before flu season because manufacturing takes time. Influenza viruses continue to evolve during that process.

mRNA technology can be updated much faster, creating the opportunity for a better match to the viruses actually circulating.

That’s how medicine should work.

Take something that’s already good…

…and make it better.

The vaccine is approved for adults 50-64 years old, with accelerated approval for adults 65 years and older—the people at highest risk for serious influenza complications.

This isn’t a win for one company.

It’s a win for patients.

A win for preventive medicine.

A win for evidence-based medicine.

A win for science.

What excites me most isn’t that it’s new.

It’s that the evidence shows we can do better.

08/05/2026

Reasons your primary care doctor is too busy to post content today…

Today they probably…

✔️ Spent an extra 20 minutes talking someone out of believing misinformation they found online so they wouldn’t skip a life-saving vaccine or cancer screening.

✔️ Held a patient’s hand while delivering a cancer diagnosis.

✔️ Called an insurance company…twice…to overturn a denial so someone could finally get the medication or imaging they actually need.

✔️ Squeezed in an emergency visit because someone’s knee hurt so badly they couldn’t work.

✔️ Filled out pages of FMLA paperwork so a patient could keep their job while recovering.

✔️ Reviewed hundreds of pages of hospital records before an appointment because every detail matters.

✔️ Called a worried family member after clinic because they deserved answers.

✔️ Stayed late to fit in one more patient who couldn’t wait another month.

✔️ Spent time helping someone quit smoking instead of simply refilling another prescription.

✔️ Helped someone prevent a heart attack instead of waiting to treat one.

✔️ Talked a patient through depression, anxiety, grief, or loneliness—even when there wasn’t enough time scheduled.

✔️ Missed lunch.

✔️ Ran behind.

✔️ Went home emotionally exhausted…and will do it all again tomorrow.

Most of these moments will never become Instagram content.

There are no ring lights in exam rooms. No viral clips of paperwork. No trending audio while comforting someone whose life changed forever.

Medicine isn’t measured by how often we post.

It’s measured in conversations that prevent disease, diagnoses caught early, tears shared, fears eased, and lives quietly changed every single day.

So if your primary care physician hasn’t posted today…

They were probably busy being your doctor.

❤️ If you appreciate the work your primary care team does behind the scenes, share this with someone who needs the reminder.

Dr. Sunny Sharma

08/14/2026

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