Overcoming Shingles Symptoms

People having Shingles often suffer from severe pain for prolong period much before the period the red rashes appear to the time the rash are finally healed. Some complication of this kind experienced by patients is described as post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN). In such situation shingles pain persists in the affected area from few months to even few years after it is healed. Both the severe pains of shingles as well as the PHN chronic pain arise from the nerve cells. But the duration and after-effect of treatment are diverse.

Shingles Pain which appears from the outbreak in the initial stage need medical treatment immediately and it is only limited for a certain time period. Comparatively the PHN persist for a longer period and is difficult to heal and are sometimes the pain is quite unbearable.

Study shows that older people tend to experience this unbearable pain more than any other younger people. The pain of PHN sufferers is in fact very agonizing and excruciating and they tend to burn and the sufferers sometimes are incapable to do the daily tasks of normal living.

Shingles Pain Treatment

Doctors today are in constant effort of using various methods to help the patients in reducing the shingles pain. The constant effort brought certain but varying degrees of success. The medication used to treat painful Shingles rashes and blisters infiltrate in the skin and reach the affected nerves. But they are not absorbed extensively into the body bloodstream. Thus medications can be continued for a prolonged periods without causing serious side effects.

A device called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) can be used to treat patients with PHN. TENS produces low-level electrical current pulses that are very helpful in relieving pain when used to the skin surface. This electrical pulse causes tingling sensations and radiates the stimulation of endorphins production in the skin. Endorphins are natural painkillers of the body.

Doctors further induce an invasive measure that is described as nerve blocks to relieve shingles pain. In this method, local anaesthetic is injected into the area where the nerves are affected. The process is mostly applied to the older patient suffering from PHN who cannot tolerate other medications used to cure the intense pain. Nerve block methods are effective cure to such patients.

Yet another option of providing temporary relief from shingles pain is the Injection of medicines into the spine of the patient. The New England Journal of Medicine published a research done by Japanese clinical study that states that when medicines like steroid methylprednisone combined in certain proportion with the anesthetic lidocaine and injected in spines of the sufferer, it could reduce severe pain of one group by more than 70 percent in comparison to another groups that who was given lidocaine for treating shingles pain.

Just wondering, I’m 15 and I think I have shingles the symptoms I’ve read are fitting pretty much exactly. These bumps are in clusters and some spread but they’re on the upper right part of my chest and back.

I was wondering if they go away on their own? Is medication absolutely necessary? If not, what can I do to prevent them from spreading and itching… and possibly healing up faster?

If they were shingles, you’d know it. They are extremely painful if allowed to progress. They usually show up in a line down one side of the body since they run along nerves. Medication is absolutely necessary because if you allow them to progress and run their course, it could lead to postherpectic neuralgia, an very painful and permanent nerve condition.

While taking the medication, you can use calamine lotion to keep them from itching.

Most of all, get to a doctor. It’s possible that it’s chicken pox and not shingles.

Shingles appears in three main stages. The herpes zoster virus reappears after lying dormant since early chickenpox, then infects nerve cells and skin cells. Itching and burning appear first, followed by a rash that may consist of open sores. The final stage, post-herpetic neuralgia, is the pain that remains long after the virus has disappeared. This phase may last for weeks, months, or even years. It ruins an otherwise pleasant lifestyle. Antiviral drugs do nothing for treating post-herpetic neuralgia. Some herbs, however , have been shown to be helpful.

Duration : 0:3:6

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how long it lasts varies from case to case and it is affected by whether or not the person was treated with any antiviral medications.
Shingles is only "contagious" to someone who has never had/been vaccinated against chickenpox. So, if a 2 yr old touches grandma’s shingles, the 2 yr old can quite possibly get chickenpox, not shingles. the same virus causes both conditions.it goes like this; let’s pretend that we have a 5-year-old child who contracts chickenpox. The virus replicates through his entire body, and then his immune system figures out how to fight this particular virus. Unfortunately the virus is not completely eradicated from his body. The virus is able to hide in ganglia located at each vertebral level from your tailbone all the way up to the top of your neck, and some ganglia in your head as well. While the virus is inside these ganglia it is protected from the immune system, but they aren’t causing symptoms, they are held dormant. Unfortunately later in life if there is something that causes the immune system to waver slightly, such as a cold, sleep deprivation, stress, or even taking a long vacation and crossing four or five time zones, then what occurs is that the dormant virus living in the ganglia creeps down the nerve(the virus which causes shingles is in the family of viruses called herpes viruses. A herpetologist is someone who studies snakes, the Greek word herp means to crawl) and causes symptoms of blistering and pain in the skin which is served by that one particular nerve. these blisters contain the virus which causes shingles and chickenpox.

My sisters friend came over to spend the night and she had 4 or 5 large bumps on her back and complained that they itched. She went to the doctor today and my sister called me and said her friend had Shingles….what are they? The last time I heard about Shingles was on Oregon Trail in elem school! (along with polio, etc)
How do you get Shingles? Is it contagious? I’m really worried that my sister shouldn’t stay there overnight because I don’t want her to catch it too….
How do you cure it?

Shingles are contagious. They come from the same virus as the chicken pox. There’s really not much you can do to cure it, the doctor probably gave her some medication for the itching and/or pain, and told her to avoid any unnecessary contact with people. I’m not sure if you can get them after having chicken pox or not so I can’t even tell you that your sister would be fine as long as she’s had the chicken pox. Whether she stays over night or not is your decision, I’m not sure I’d let my sister/brother stay. Hope this helps.

Shingles, they hurt really bad, they don’t hit just older people, they occur when you had a lot of stress in your life, they hit anyone who has had chicken pox, because the virus herpes zoster lies dormant (inactive) in your body. I had them and I’m only 23, I got them becasue I was so stress out about a new job and a new baby. It lasted for about 3 months. Headache.
Sensitivity to light.
Flu-like symptoms without a fever.
You may then feel itching, tingling, or extreme pain in the area where a rash will develop several days later, commonly on your back or neck. The rash progresses into clusters of blisters along the path of the nerve. The blisters fill with fluid and eventually crust over. It takes 2 to 4 weeks for the blisters to heal, although some scars may remain. Hope I helped.

What’s left of the rash is mostly on my forehead and temple. There has been no pain but still a lot of itching.

Once all the spots are gone then you are not contagious anymore.

The doctor says that there is no cure, there must be. Does anyone know of a Doctor or medicine or anything that would help my Dad, cure his Shingles inside his body or ease the pain.

Today’s treatments provide a variety of ways to shorten the duration of a shingles outbreak and to control the associated pain. Sometimes, however, shingles leads to a chronic painful condition called post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) that can be difficult to treat.

Although viral diseases can’t be cured, doctors can prescribe oral antiviral medications, such as Zovirax (acyclovir), Famvir (famciclovir) and Valtrex (valacyclovir), that help control the infection by hindering reproduction of the virus in the nerve cells. "Antiviral therapy may shorten the course of an episode of shingles," says Cvetkovich. "However, therapy must be started as early as possible after symptoms develop–within 48 hours–in order to have an effect."

To relieve pain, the doctor may recommend over-the-counter analgesics (pain-relieving drugs), such as ibuprofen and naproxen, or prescription drugs, such as indomethacin, all members of a class of medications known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Acetaminophen is also commonly used to relieve the pain. If pain is severe, doctors may add stronger analgesics, such as codeine or oxycodone.

Doctors use other methods to alleviate pain with varying degrees of success. "One of the relatively new medications that I’m enthusiastic about is the Lidoderm patch," says Veronica Mitchell, M.D., director of the pain management center and inpatient pain service at Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, D.C. "It’s the transdermal form of lidocaine and it’s been studied in the PHN population with very good results," adds Mitchell. "We prescribed the Lidoderm patch for a patient who had intolerable side effects with oral medications–and no relief–and she’s had about a 50 percent-plus improvement in pain relief. It’s one of my first-line therapies." The medication contained in this soft, pliable patch penetrates the skin, reaching the damaged nerves just under the skin without being absorbed significantly into the bloodstream. This means that the patch can be used for long periods of time without serious side effects.

Yet another method used to treat PHN is transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS. A device that generates low-level pulses of electrical current is applied to the skin’s surface, causing tingling sensations and offering some people pain relief. One theory as to how TENS works is that the electrical current stimulates production of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers.

TENS is not for everyone. "TENS didn’t help at all," says Einar Raysor of Rockville, Md. "I found there was a problem in fine-tuning the administration of the electrical current. Low doses of the electrical current didn’t do anything for me. When the technician increased the current, it gave me a painful response. After this happened a couple of times, we dropped the treatment."

As a last resort, invasive procedures called nerve blocks may be used to provide temporary relief. These procedures usually entail the injection of a local anesthetic into the area of the affected nerves. "We have controversial results in the terms of the efficacy of nerve blocks," says Mitchell. "I do consider nerve blocks in treating PHN and I would perform them because there’s some evidence that they work, but the real efficacy is to catch and treat the patient in the acute shingles phase. As PHN presents mostly in the elderly, and the older patient often is unable to tolerate some of the medications we use, I find nerve blocks useful in these cases."

Injection directly into the spine is another option for relief of pain that is not easily treated. A Japanese clinical study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that an injection of the steroid methylprednisone combined with the anesthetic lidocaine reduced pain by more than 70 percent in one patient group compared with groups that received lidocaine alone or an inactive substance.

I recently had a case of shingles (Herpes zoster), which according to some sites are after-effect symptoms of chicken pox. However, I never had chicken pox before, is this possible and if so, do I have no risk of chicken pox in the future?

I don’t really think it is possible. Check out this website. It is possible though that you could have had a very mild case of chickenpox or maybe you have chickenpox before you were one. Once again, check out this webstite. I don’t think you have the risk of chickenpox if you have already had shingles. Did you go to the doctor and be sure that is was shingles and maybe not some other kind of skin irritant? If you are sure it was shingles then, most likely you should have had chickenpox at some point. Were you vaccinated for chickenpox? If so that would be an intersting study.