This vaccine lowers risk of heart attack and stroke by 26% — so why was it discontinued in the US?
The nerve!
A type of herpes virus — the varicella-zoster virus — causes chickenpox in childhood and shingles later in life.
Shingles travels along nerves, triggering a distinctive blistering rash and what some have described as the worst pain they have ever experienced.
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3 Shingles infections trigger a distinctive blistering rash and intense pain.
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A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation, raising the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Older adults, people with weakened immune systems and those who've had chickenpox are at higher risk of shingles. Experts say vaccination is the most effective way to reduce this risk.
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Now, a new study out of South Korea reports that a certain type of vaccine can offer benefits beyond lowering the risk of shingles — but it's no longer available in the US.
The live zoster vaccine, which contains a weakened version of the shingles virus, can lower the risk of heart failure, a stroke, a heart attack or death from heart disease by 26% for up to eight years, according to research published Monday in the European Heart Journal.
'Our study suggests that the shingles vaccine may help lower the risk of heart disease, even in people without known risk factors,' said Dong Keon Yon from the Kyung Hee University College of Medicine in Seoul.
'This means that vaccination could offer health benefits beyond preventing shingles.'
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3 Experts say vaccination is the most effective way to reduce the risk of developing shingles.
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South Korea offers two live zoster vaccines — SkyZoster was approved in 2017 and Zostavax in 2009.
The US allowed Zostavax until 2020.
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Researchers found that its effectiveness waned over time and it didn't protect everyone, such as people over 80 and those with weakened immune systems.
Studies suggested that Zostavax was 67% effective in the first year but only 50% effective in year 2.
It was replaced by Shingrix, a recombinant vaccine that uses a protein from the varicella-zoster virus to activate the body's immune system to recognize and fight the virus. Shingrix has been found to be over 90% effective in preventing shingles.
3 Shingles is most common in older adults, people with weakened immune systems and those who've had chickenpox.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that healthy adults 50 and older and immunocompromised adults 19 and older get two doses of Shingrix.
Yon's team said more research on the recombinant vaccine is needed to see if it can provide similar cardio benefits as the live zoster vaccine. South Korea also offers Shingrix.
Yon's study included data from over 1.2 million adults 50 and over in South Korea.
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The protective effect was strongest in the two to three years after vaccination and especially pronounced in men, people younger than 60 and those who smoke, drink alcohol or avoid exercise.
'This is one of the largest and most comprehensive studies following a healthy general population over a period of up to 12 years,' Yon said.
'For the first time, this has allowed us to examine the association between shingles vaccination and 18 different types of cardiovascular disease,' he added. 'We were able to account for various other health conditions, lifestyle factors and socioeconomic status, making our findings more robust.'
Yon noted that the study does not establish a direct causal relationship between the vaccine and the lower risk of heart problems, so underlying factors should be considered.
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National Geographic
a day ago
- National Geographic
A Swiss village was buried under a mountain. This town could be next.
In the past century, scientists have observed more rockfalls and avalanches in the Alps, a looming threat to nearby villages. In this aerial view, rubble and ice fill a portion of the Loetschental Valley following a landslide on June 3, 2025 in Blatten, Switzerland. Over 317 million cubic feet of rubble, mud, and ice fell on to Blatten on May 28. Photograph by Robert Hradil, Getty Images Last month, Lukas Kalbermatten-Ritler stood in a hamlet overlooking the small Swiss village of Blatten opposite the Birch Glacier, holding up his camera phone up in disbelief. 'It was like a bomb went off,' says Kalbermatten-Ritler, who's home and historic third-generation family-owned Hotel Edelweiss was destroyed on May 28. 'There were black rocks coming like a wall over the glacier, like it was a big hand taking the village. This was the moment I stopped filming. I didn't want to film when my village was falling.' It took 28 seconds for the landslide from the collapse of the glacier to cover 600-year-old wooden homes in one of Switzerland's oldest and most picturesque valley villages in hard brown, cold sandpaper sludge that will be sinking for years. The collapse was so powerful it registered as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake. It was a village that scientists never expected to see almost completely buried by 328 million cubic feet of falling rock and ice. Destroyed houses float in the water from the river Lonza that formed a lake beside the massive avalanche, triggered by the collapse of the Birch Glacier. Photograph by Michael Buholzer, Keystone/AP A house is submerged in water following a glacier collapse. Photograph by Michael Buholzer, Keystone/AP Yet there are others, like Kandersteg, a Swiss tourist town nine miles away that scientists watch anxiously. It sits in the shadow of an unstable cliffside called Spitze Stei could trigger a landslide with twice the ice and rock debris that flattened Blatten. Scientists say it should have fallen by now. 'We can't predict exactly when disasters like this will happen,' says Matthias Huss, senior glaciologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and director of the Swiss glacier monitoring network. Even with the best rockfall, landslide, and avalanche monitoring systems in the world, Alpine towns remain in uncertain danger. Magazine for all ages starting at $25/year In the worst-case scenario, over 700 million cubic feet of limestone and marl will come crashing down into Lake Oeschinen, itself a result of landslides 3,200 years ago. The splash would send a wave 2.5 miles into the center of Kandersteg, covering around 25 percent of the town, including hotels, homes, and the school. Other less-severe, likelier, models show smaller, still destructive debris flows surpassing safety dams built by the village, according to Nils Hahlen, head of the natural hazard division for the Office of Forest and Natural Hazards in the Swiss canton, or state, of Bern. The landslide that devastated the town of Blatten was unexpected. In other, nearby villages, scientists have identified unstable cliff faces that might trigger similar tides of rock, water, and debris in the future. Photograph by Michael Buholzer, Keystone/AP 'But mountain people are robust. They don't move out of their villages because of changing threats unless authorities decide it's too risky to stay,' says Markus Stoffel, a geomorphologist at the University of Geneva who grew up near Blatten and Kandersteg. Most of the town's 1,300 residents remain. On mountain watch Four hours into what was billed as a 'short' (eight-mile) hike, I rest on a mossy stump while my 75-year-old mountain guide smokes a pipe. Mountain guides don't eat much, Fritz Loretan tells me. He's also a man of few words (clocking it down the trail in loafer sneakers with no tread), and when he talks about the looming threat in Kandersteg, he explains: 'When you grow up in the mountains, then you are used to them, and you won't feel safe in other places.' In 2018, while paragliding over Spitze Stei, Loretan's friend saw 'a cut in the mountain,' and alerted authorities. Experts realized the outer rock section could fall at any moment. That was the year Spitze Stei became the most watched rock in Switzerland via high-tech drones, radar surveys, GPS, and cameras. 'At Spitze Stei the main water sources are snowmelt and rain. The exact amount of water in the mountain is one of the unknown factors,' says Hahlen. Since Earth's last ice age, rockfaces have been routinely dislodged from Alpine peaks as a result of natural movement. But in the past century, scientists have seen more rockfalls and avalanches. Glaciers and permafrost—the high-altitude frozen soil, rock, and sediment that acts like glue to hold the mountains together—are melting as a result of the warming temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions. A view of a landslide in Brienz, three days apart, from November of last year. As the region warms, ice and frozen soil are melting and unsticking the glue that once held parts of the mountain together. Photograph by Gian Ehrenzeller, Keystone/AP (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Gian Ehrenzeller, Keystone/AP (Bottom) (Right) As this icy glue melts, it allows water to penetrate cracks in the mountain, build pressure, and eventually rupture, triggering more frequent and severe landslides, rockslides, rockfalls, and avalanches, especially after intense rain and snow, another hazard of warming temperatures. 'In the next few years and decades, we expect an increase in risk from permafrost rock,' says Felix Pfluger, chair of landslide research at the Technical University of Munich. While catastrophic rock and snow fall can go virtually unnoticed in the remote regions of Alaska, Siberia, or northern Canada, they're an existential threat to many Alpine communities. The landslide that covered Blatten isn't the first tragedy in the Alps from a rockfall. This past June, residents of the Swiss village of Brienz/Brinzauls evacuated for the fourth time in two years from a rockslide threat (after debris stopped just shy of the village in 2023). Eight hikers and ten homes in the valley of Bondo didn't survive a devastating landslide in 2017. Stoffel says he expects more chain-reaction disasters with bigger consequences in the Alps—rock avalanches overloading glacier ice and causing it to liquify and slide down the slope, like in Blatten. His research shows 'a clear tendency for such [catastrophic chain-reaction] events to become more frequent in a warming world,' he says. '...especially after heavy rain.' A view of Kandersteg, Switzerland in October, 2023. While the region is being closely monitored, it remains safe. Photograph by Noemie Vieillard, Hans Lucas/Redux 'If you ask the older people in the village, they'll tell you there was always falling debris,' says Kandersteg's Mayor Maeder René-François. Growing up in Kandersteg, he remembers poking a pole into the cracks between ice and snow to search for bodies after an avalanche took out half a hotel in high season. There's a long history of rockfall and landslides, he says, as recent as 2023 and even this past May five died here in an avalanche. 'With climate change, it's happening faster. It rains harder, the days are hotter, and the fog sets in thicker over the mountain,' he says. 'But people here are not scared, it's life in the mountains. They respect that they must act in the correct way and follow the evacuation plan.' Since 2021, Kandersteg has enforced a ban on all new construction to minimize potential damage in the village district, closed a section of town, and built dams to reroute lake water. 'Big disasters normally start smaller. Instabilities with rock fall over a certain time start with cracks opening. A mountain doesn't just disappear out of the blue. There are always precursor signs,' says Stoffel. 'And if you take them seriously and observe the changes continuously, then, then you may not be able to protect the buildings or the village, but you can save lives.' While no one knows exactly when or what section of Spitze Stei will start sliding down the mountain, when it starts to crumble, residents and tourists should have at least 24 to 48 hours to evacuate. On a warm mid-June day, I followed tourists with hiking packs and poles to a mountain chalet built in 1880 and pulled up a lunch chair under an apple-red umbrella that matched a nearby Swiss flag and took in the brilliant turquoise of Lake Oeschinen–glistening and undisturbed by falling rocks, for now. Swimmers and paddlers snap selfies; a bride and groom pose by cows grazing near a roped-off section of the beach—their bells clanging measure with the chirping birds. 'None of them know they're right under it,' my server, David Brunoldi, told me when I asked him which rock is Spitze Stei. He points to the 9,800-foot frosty peak above us. 'More rocks are coming down every day.' Brunoldi says mountain people stay in Kandersteg for generations because it's home. On this picture-perfect, rugged Alpine terrain, where rockfall has always been a risk, his grandfather worked and died on a mountain train. Last year alone, an increasing 2.8 million cubic feet of rock crumbled down into the lake. 'No need to worry though, Brunoldi adds. 'It's not falling today.'
Miami Herald
a day ago
- Miami Herald
A growing number of shoppers are avoiding this ingredient
Trying to keep up with food and wellness trends feels like a full-time job. It started with organic. Then came gluten-free. Then vegan, non-GMO, Whole30, name it. Grocery store shelves are now a sea of claims, labels, and certifications, each one shouting for attention and promising to be the "cleaner," "better," or "safer" option. Shoppers are flipping packages over, scanning ingredient lists, and thinking twice before tossing something in the cart. Related: Heinz announces a genius new product fans will love They're not just looking for what a product has. They're zeroing in on what it leaves out. And now, a new category of ingredients is getting side-eyed. It's not sugar, gluten, or carbs this time. It's something that weaseled its way into everything from salad dressing to snack that was easy to miss, until now. That rising skepticism paved the way for a new kind of label, one that's now quietly changing what ends up in people's carts. Image source: Getty Images The ingredient getting dragged? Industrial seed oils. Think: canola, soybean, sunflower, and corn. These weren't even part of the American diet a century ago. Now, they can make up over 20% of the average person's daily calories. You'll find them in everything: frozen meals, sauces, baked goods, even "healthy" snacks. They're cheap. They're stable. And they've quietly become a food industry favorite. But not everyone's convinced they belong in our food. Shoppers are starting to question their heavy refining, sky-high omega-6 levels, and ultra-processed vibes. To meet that growing concern, brands are now turning to Seed Oil Free Certified - a label that launched in 2023 but is gaining serious momentum in 2025. Related: Forget the ice cream man, try this healthy take on a summer treat It's the first official certification for products made without industrial seed oils. And the brands who jumped on board are already reaping the benefits. According to a press release, Seed Oil Free Certified products saw a 216% sales spike in Q1 2025 compared to the year prior. Even more eye-popping, these products made a 410% jump in just the most recent 12-week period. And that growth isn't limited to niche wellness aisles. Sales are booming in both natural and conventional retail. What started as a quiet movement is quickly becoming a shelf-shaking trend. For shoppers, the seal keeps things simple. For brands, it's a fast track to standing out. According to the Seed Oil Free Alliance, certified brands are seeing stronger customer interest, better shelf velocity, and real traction with ingredient-conscious buyers. "We've seen firsthand the positive impact it has had on our brand," said Daily Crunch Co-founder Laurel Orley. More on retail: Starbucks changes drink prices (you might like it)Iconic Disney theme park treat comes to grocery storesGeneral Mills makes huge change to your favorite cereals "Displaying the Seed Oil Free Certified seal on our packaging helps customers identify Daily Crunch as a product aligned with their values." And those values are driving real decisions. A recent nationwide survey found that 28% of U.S. consumers are now actively trying to avoid seed oils. They're looking for simpler ingredients, less industrial processing, and more transparency. For brands, it's not just about putting a new label on the front. It's about building trust in an aisle full of noise. And the numbers don't lie: shoppers are buying in. A full list of Seed Oil Free Certified products can be found at Related: The diet mistake 71% of Americans are trying to fix The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
National Geographic
2 days ago
- National Geographic
Was Alexander the Great really poisoned? Science sheds new light on an age-old question.
The sick Alexander (Alessandro infermo), by Domenico Induno, 19th Century, oil on canvas. Alexander drinks from a cup to show his trust in the doctor who gave it to him and condemns Parmenione who told him he would be poisoned. This event was said to take place in 333 B.C., 10 years prior to Alexander's death. Photograph by Sergio Anelli / Mondadori Portfolio, Getty Images The young conqueror fell suddenly and fatally ill at an all-night feast. Now, a Stanford historian has found a potential culprit. In June 323 BCE, in the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon, the most powerful man in the world died. Just 13 days earlier, Alexander the Great—the greatest conqueror the world had seen—had been drinking at one of his many all-night banquets when he suddenly cried out in pain. He was sent to bed suffering from abdominal pain and a fever, and over the following days his condition deteriorated. He suffered from weakness, thirst, possible convulsion, pain, partial paralysis and dozed in and out of consciousness. Towards the end he slipped into a death-like state and was unable to speak or move. For six days after his death, the body of Alexander the Great showed no signs of decomposition. To the ancient Greeks it was a sign that Alexander was more god than man. To everyone else, for more than 2,000 years, the cause of his death and his body's preservation has been a mystery. Despite numerous theories, and a great deal of speculation, the death of the 32-year-old Alexander has been one of history's greatest cold cases. Fragment from the "Alexander Mosaic" showing Alexander the Great in battle against Persian King Darius III. (From a Roman copy of a Hellenistic painting.) Photograph by Universal History Archive, Getty Images Even in antiquity people debated the cause of Alexander's death. Some thought it was caused by illness or infection, but throughout the ages, many historians from Pliny to Voltaire suspected foul play. The conspiracy to murder Alexander, wrote Diodorus, 'was suppressed by the power of Alexander's successors.' Those who suspected poisoning even claimed to know the toxin at work: Roman intellectual Pausanias (2nd century CE) wrote of the 'lethal power' of the River Styx and added that he had heard it said that water from the Styx 'was the poison that killed Alexander.' Others, including Plutarch a biographer of Alexander, even claimed that it was Alexander's former teacher, the philosopher Aristotle, who provided the fatal dose. Apparently, Aristotle feared the man that Alexander had become. (Whatever else happened Aristotle is undeniably innocent—he was in Athens at the time of Alexander's death). (How suspicion and intrigue eroded Alexander the Great's empire) It is here that history appears to bleed into mythology. To moderns, the River Styx is best known from legends about the underworld. According to numerous ancient myths, the souls (or shades) of the deceased have to cross the River Styx on their way to Hades. But the Styx was not only a portal to the underworld, it was also a real place. Based on ancient accounts and modern investigation, the Styx has been securely identified as the Mavroneri (Black Water), a tributary of the Karathis River that empties into the Corinthian Gulf. Why would people think that the waters of the Styx were poisonous and that this poison was used to assassinate Alexander the Great? In a new article, published in Geoheritage, Adrienne Mayor, a renowned research scholar in Classics and History of Science at Stanford, decided to investigate. Bulgaria's cultural capital Many people in antiquity recognized the noxious properties of the River Styx. Plato refers to the 'fearful powers' of the Styx, the geographer Strabo described it as 'deadly water,' and the natural historian Pliny said that 'drinking [the water] causes immediate death.' The waters of the Styx were even thought to corrode metals and ceramic containers. As late as the 1860, when famed German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt commented on the Styx, he remarked that the stream has an 'evil reputation' among the 'present inhabitants' of the region. Even in the twentieth century locals avoided drinking from the stream and complained that it corrupted clay vessels. Poisonous waters were well known in antiquity—one mentioned in the Bible was used as part of a truth trial for potentially adulterous women—but this fact alone does not explain the Styx's dark and persistent reputation. (Were Alexander the Great and Hephaestion more than friends?) Mayor, a historian of ancient science, wanted to understand how the mythology of the Styx's waters had developed. She told National Geographic that the project was years in the making. As someone who has specialized in unearthing the genuine natural knowledge embedded in ancient legends, the project was something of a natural fit. Fifteen years ago, in 2010, Antoinette Hayes, a pharmaceutical toxicologist, told Mayor about the possibility of a toxic crust that forms on limestone, and a recent report on the mass death of an elk herd after eating toxic lichen that piqued Mayor's imagination. Together with the assistance of geologists, chemists, toxicologists and other scientists, Mayor began to investigate the possibility that in antiquity the Styx harbored naturally occurring toxins. In the resulting article and her forthcoming book Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore, Mayor argues that the limestone-lined pools of the Styx are 'ideal for harboring two extremely lethal natural substances, both only recently discovered by science: calicheamicin and toxic lichen.' (Alexander the Great's warrior mother wielded unprecedented power) Calicheamicin from limestone Calicheamicin is a crusty deposit that precipitates out of limestone, particularly in places where water drips, pools, and evaporates. As Mayor notes in her article, 'These are the conditions described by ancient observers of the rock-ringed pool by the Styx/Mavroneri waterfall. The water that flows through limestone is charged with calcium carbonate, which deposits hardened caliche crusts on rock surfaces, moss, and lichen' It can also form crusts on metal or clay (which might explain the myths about corroding vessels). A number of organisms are known to colonize the surface of caliche. Some, like algae, are comparatively harmless. Others, like cyanobacteria, are 'neurotoxic, hepatotoxic, cytotoxic, and endotoxic at levels very dangerous to humans and animals.' In the 1980s a toxicologist collected a sample of caliche in Texas that led to the discovery of calicheamicin, a toxic substance that has been used to develop potent antibody-targeted chemotherapy but in its original form has a 'cellular lethality greater than that of ricin.' We cannot say for certain if it was present in antiquity at the limestone rimmed pool of the Styx. A great deal depends on the presence—in antiquity—of the proper nutrients and soil conditions for its growth. Depending on the dose, mortality from a substance like this would 'probably take days or weeks due to the toxic mechanisms of DNA destruction.' This process would ultimately have led to multiple organ failure. Because it dissolves in alcohol it would have been the perfect poison to slip into Alexander's drinking vessel at a banquet. (Alexander the Great had daddy issues) Oxalic acid from lichen Mayor also posits a second soil-based toxin that may have been collected from the limestone rock ledges and pools of the Styx. Many fungi, molds and lichens produce toxic mycotoxin. While the harmful effects of certain species of mushrooms have been well known for centuries, until relatively recently lichen were thought to be benign. A recent study noted by Mayor discovered that 'one in eight species of lichens contain…poisons [microcystins] that cause liver damage.' Because ancient people did not recognize lichen as distinct from host trees and rocks, they were not identifiable as a source of poisoning. If goats died at the River Styx, as the ancient geographer Pausanias says that they did, 'water,' writes Mayor, 'might be logically identified as the culprit, rather than the rocks on the banks.' The most common lichen forming fungi on limestone in this region, Mayor writes, are 'black meristematic aureobasidium-like and Penicillium-like species, which can be highly toxic when ingested by animals and humans.' The fact that lichenizing fungi produce a black patina on rocks recalls the use of the adjective 'black' in description of the Styx. These fungi also excrete toxic oxalic acid, which is highly corrosive. This, too, might explain the rumors that the waters of the Styx destroyed metal. Today, oxalic acid used to dissolve rust. The roots of a legend 'The results of ingesting [either of these] these substances,' Mayor says, 'would have been observed and remembered over generations.' Even if only a few animals and people died, the memory of the events would have added to the ancient lore surrounding a river already saturated with myths about the underworld. In the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death, says Mayor, 'I think it was reasonable for Alexander's companions to believe that he had been poisoned—many in his circle had motives and opportunities. And his detailed symptoms match those long associated with Styx water.' Mayor stressed that her study does not solve the debate over the death of Alexander the Great. For that, she noted, we need a time machine and a toxicological autopsy. The problem is ultimately unsolvable. Scientists could test the waters of the Styx/Mavroneri today for calicheamicin and lichen but their findings—whether positive or negative—would not tell us if these poisons were present in the stream in antiquity. What Mayor's study does explain is why people thought Alexander had ingested the waters of the Styx. Once members of his circle decided that Alexander had been poisoned, they identified the poison with the River Styx because, like Alexander, the River Styx was the stuff of legend. After the association was made, people began to narrate his death with this idea in mind.
