Aug 28, 2026 · 22 min · 10 segments
Why might the shingles vaccine help prevent heart attacks? Does an eclipse affect how we sleep? Why do farts seem to stick around longer in the shower? How does toothpaste fight acidity? Can you train…
Chris SmithGuestClarence FordHost
I had a really interesting conversation, uh, this week actually, just before we go to that question.
This is Fabiana Corsi-Zuehle, who's just published a paper in the journal Nature Medicine, and it seems like not a week goes by before we hear another interesting thing about the shingles vaccine, because what they've done is to look at its impact on heart attacks and strokes.
And they find that in people who've had the new shingles vaccine, which is the so-called recombinant vaccine against shingles, which is the later in age reactivation of the chickenpox virus, there's a nearly ten percent reduction in heart attack and stroke risk in people in the up to seven years after they have that vaccine, which would translate-
... into millions of, of events, cardiovascular events saved or prevented around the world with wide-scale adoption of this vaccine.
They've observed people who've had and not had this particular vaccine and seen this difference, so we don't know why exactly it's happening.
But they suspect it's having some kind of impact, either directly on the virus that might be doing this or on the immune system indirectly and doing this.
But either way, it's really interesting, and you can hear the conversation with her and another expert, virologist Judy Brewer, on, on the Naked Scientist podcast.
So if anyone's interested or toying with the idea as to whether to get the, the new shingles vaccine...
I say new, it's been out for a few years now, but it's the newer one, then that'll be out on the Naked Scientist website later today.
I had a really interesting conversation, uh, this week actually, just before we go to that question.
This is Fabiana Corsi-Zuehle, who's just published a paper in the journal Nature Medicine, and it seems like not a week goes by before we hear another interesting thing about the shingles vaccine, because what they've done is to look at its impact on heart attacks and strokes.
And they find that in people who've had the new shingles vaccine, which is the so-called recombinant vaccine against shingles, which is the later in age reactivation of the chickenpox virus, there's a nearly ten percent reduction in heart attack and stroke risk in people in the up to seven years after they have that vaccine, which would translate-
... into millions of, of events, cardiovascular events saved or prevented around the world with wide-scale adoption of this vaccine.
They've observed people who've had and not had this particular vaccine and seen this difference, so we don't know why exactly it's happening.
But they suspect it's having some kind of impact, either directly on the virus that might be doing this or on the immune system indirectly and doing this.
But either way, it's really interesting, and you can hear the conversation with her and another expert, virologist Judy Brewer, on, on the Naked Scientist podcast.
So if anyone's interested or toying with the idea as to whether to get the, the new shingles vaccine...
I say new, it's been out for a few years now, but it's the newer one, then that'll be out on the Naked Scientist website later today.
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