The Common Vaccine That Cuts Cardiac Mortality By 66%

…and other items from this week’s health science news:

Vaccinated against cardiac mortality?

Directly? No. But indirectly? Yes.

Looking at data from 246,822 adults in the US with atherosclerotic heart disease, those who were vaccinated against shingles had 46% fewer major cardiac events and 66% lower risk of death within one year.

Otherwise put in numbers, the vaccine was also associated with:

• 32% fewer heart attacks
• 25% fewer strokes
• 25% fewer instances of heart failure

As one limitation, this was an observational study, so healthier behaviors among vaccinated people could partly explain the benefit, but researchers adjusted for many factors, and the association holds.

In terms of how it likely has this effect, the researchers note that preventing shingles (which caused by the Herpes zoster virus) can reduce not just inflammation, but also the clot formation that can trigger heart attacks and strokes.

Current guidance already recommends shingles vaccination for adults aged 50+ and others with weakened immunity, so now there’s an extra reason to get it:

Read in full: This common vaccine cuts heart risk nearly in half in new study

Related: Winter viruses can trigger a heart attack or stroke, our study shows. It’s another good reason to get a flu or COVID shot

Ultra-processed foods and cardiac risk

If you don’t feel like reducing your cardiac risk with the above method, how about increasing by an equal and opposite amount, with this method?

In few words: eating higher amounts of ultra-processed foods is linked to a 67% higher risk of heart attack, stroke, or death from heart disease compared with lower intake.

Importantly, the risk doesn’t just spike at high intake—each additional daily serving* increases cardiovascular risk by 5.1%.

_{*This is about the “servings” listed on packaging. Not “one meal”. More like “5 pringles” etc.}

It’s also worth noting that the increased risk remained even after adjusting for calories, overall diet quality, and conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity:

Read in full: Ultra-processed foods linked to 67% higher risk of heart attack and stroke

Related: How Likely Is It That Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) Will Kill You?

Dr. ChatGPT recommends that teens should starve themselves

These days, a lot of people are turning to ChatGPT and similar LLMs for health advice. We don’t recommend it.

Researchers (Dr. Ayşe Betül Bilen et al.) investigated how good such AI models are at dispensing nutritional advice for teens. Specifically:

❝A total of 60 three-day diet plans were generated in two sessions by five AI models (ChatGPT-4o, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude 4.1, Bing Chat-5GPT, and Perplexity) for four standardized adolescent profiles in this cross-sectional and comparative study.❞

In few words: it didn’t go well.

The AI models systematically undercalculated energy requirements by around 700kcal per day, as well as undercalculating protein requirements by 20g/day, carb requirements by 115g/day, and fat requirements by 16g/day.

So, please don’t rely on AI for this, nor let your loved ones do so.

Read in full: AI diet plans underestimate teen nutrition and miss key nutrients

Related: AI: The Doctor That Never Tires? ← this is about made-for-medical deep learning models, not large language models like ChatGPT et al.

Take care!