The earlier you start the better.
Injecting people with a shingles vaccine is far easier than the others you listed, which is why it stands out.
This means addressing hearing loss, e.g. via hearing aids.
Sure, I could wait 7 or 8 years until I qualify via insurance, but is that really worth the risk for what is an easily absorbed cost to me? Especially when I have a friend in her late 30s who just went through a very rough bout of shingles?
It makes sense to have targets like age 50 for population-wide public health recommendations. But it can and does infect people of much earlier ages.
Recent articles like this make me think I'll go ahead.
Infections generally increase the risk of future dementia. Like the more colds you have throughout life.
"association" undersells it a bit, because the data is better than the typical cohort study, which has issues like "what if people who got the vaccine are also richer and care about their health more?". There's quasi-randomization going on. From the more in depth article that's linked:
>Research is also revealing unexpected interventions that help to keep ageing minds sharp. One of the most promising derives from an analysis by Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University and his team of a natural experiment in Wales. In 2013 the British region started offering people aged 70-79 free vaccinations through the public-health system. This change resembled an RCT, in that a large number of people were separated almost at random into two groups: those who had already turned 80 in the weeks before the programme started, and so were not eligible to be jabbed; and those who turned 80 in the weeks after, roughly half of whom were duly vaccinated.
Whoa wait what? This is the first time I’ve heard of this - is this actually common knowledge?
I recall seeing a few discussions on HN comments hypothesizing that immune system stimulation via the vaccine might be the root cause. Now that the Amyloid hypothesis is on the wane, hopefully we'll explore other paths.
¹ The vaccine strain tends to be much more mild than the wild strain, and indeed it was quite unpleasant, but not extremely painful for me. The wild strain is considerably more painful and linked to a greater incidence rate of complications. Please do not skip chickenpox vaccinations for your kids, the minor risk of latent infection from attenuated vaccine is far less harmful than the consequences of not vaccinating. Most important of all, if you have a cluster of blisters or rash on one side of your body that keep popping up, make sure to see a doctor and get on antivirals within the first 72 hours for best results.
I think the age 50 target is dated. With reduced childhood incidence of chicken pox, we're all exposed to varicella zoster less, and it seems like the ages of incidence of shingles is falling. Public health recommendations are slow to catch up with research (especially for vaccinations, these days).
I had shingles in my 30s. It was the sickest I've ever been.
We even have anabolic steroids that were approved for muscle wasting in cancer patients, but if you can find a doctor willing to write the prescription and a pharmacy that won’t question it, anyone can have pharmacy grade Anavar for the gym, completely legal. In theory the doctor writing the prescription is putting their license at risk, but enforcement is so lax that there are “anti-aging” clinics all over that will prescribe testosterone and Anavar to anyone with a credit card.
So with a documented history of shingles you should have no problem getting a prescription written. It would be worth a quick check with your insurance company because it might even be covered if your doctor will fill out the form and attach evidence of the past diagnosis.
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