Overcoming Shingles Symptoms

Helping You Alleviate Shingles (Herpes Zoster) Symptoms.

I decided to create this Blog to help people who suffer from shingles and to share some of the Remedies that helped me in this battle.

		What is shingles? What causes shingles? Shingles (Herpes zoster) is a skin rash caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. After an individual has chickenpox, this virus lives in the nervous system and is never fully cleared from the body.
Under certain circumstances, such as emotional stress, immune deficiency (from AIDS or chemotherapy), or with cancer, the virus reactivates and causes shingles. Anyone who has ever had chickenpox is at risk for the development of shingles. It has been estimated that up to 1,000,000 cases of shingles occur each year in the U.S. The herpes virus that causes shingles and chickenpox is not the same as the herpes viruses that causes genital herpes (which can be sexually transmitted) or herpes mouth sores.

What are symptoms of shingles? How long does shingles last? Before a rash is visible, the patient may notice several days to a week of burning pain and sensitive skin. Shingles rash starts as small blisters on a red base, with new blisters continuing to form for three to five days. The blisters follow the path of individual nerves that come out of the spinal cord (called a dermatomal pattern) and appear as a band- or belt-like pattern on an area of skin.
The entire path of the affected nerve may be involved, or there may be areas with blisters and areas without blisters. Eventually, the blisters pop, and the area starts to ooze. The affected areas will then crust over and heal. The duration of the outbreak may take three to four weeks from start to finish. On occasion, the pain will be present but the blisters may never appear. This can be a very confusing cause of local pain. Is Shingles Contagious? Yes, Shingles is Contagious. Shingles can be spread from an affected person to children or adults who have not had chickenpox. But instead of developing shingles, these people develop chickenpox. Once they have had chickenpox, people cannot catch shingles (or contract the virus) from someone else.
Once infected, however, people have the potential to develop shingles later in life. Shingles is contagious to people that have not previously had chickenpox, as long as there are new blisters forming and old blisters healing. Similar to chickenpox, the time prior to healing or crusting of the blisters is the contagious stage of shingles. Once all of the blisters are crusted over, the virus can no longer be spread.

I wish you and loved ones good health, happiness and success in overcoming the shingles. Please scroll down to next posts to read more….

J. K.

Technorati Tags: chickenpox, herpes, herpes cure, rash, shingles, Shingles Cure, shingles disease, Shingles Symptoms, shingles treatment

and have been told they are not catching but I am not so sure?

http://www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/23068820/
Lots of info here.

Says you can catch chickenpox from someone with shingle if you have not had chickenpox before. But you can’t get shingles from someone who has shingles

hi, I am looking for a cure for shingles, it is suppose to be a natural cure, consisting of 3 ingredient found at any grocery store, and only costing around 3.50$ If any one knows what theese3 ingredient’s are can you let me know?

Are you talking about 3% hydrogen peroxide?
it’s really cheap and cures all sorts of ailments.

Check out www.earthclinic.com for all sorts of natural remedies! I love this website.

Here is a link for Shingles Cures! Good Luck I hope this helps, it has helped me with other stuff.

http://www.earthclinic.com/CURES/shingles.html

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.

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.