What is a Shingles Infection?
While it is likely you are aware that some people suffer from Shingles; unless you are a doctor or medical professional, there is little chance you know what it actually is, what symptoms it produces, how harmful it can be to you, or if it can really be cured. If you have to cope or live with Shingles, you will need to learn what it is, what it’s symptoms are and what you can do to handle it or at least minimize its effects.
Shingles (also called herpes zoster by the medical field) is an acute and often quite painful infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), which is the organism that has been discovered to cause chicken pox.
If you ever have the chicken pox disease or are given the chicken pox vaccine in your youth to protect you, though you may feel better, the virus never truly leaves you altogether. Rather it stays hibernating in your body for most of your lifespan until something reactivates it. This is when you may now develop full blown Shingles.
Many kinds of attacks on the body appear to be able to trigger Shingles. These include anything that can induce a dip in your immune system such as a bout of cancer, debilitating illness, serious infection or high amounts of stress.
Attacks of shinglea are often quite painful and commonly very uncomfortable. No permanent remedy has been discovered for shingles yet, but many treatments are available to block or assuage the symptoms.
Most people who live in moderately warm climates get exposed to the Shingles or Chicken Pox virus during their teen years. Shingles tends to not create any symptoms during this period so it is most likely you can carry it for ages undetected in your body.
The older you are, the more probable you are to get shingles if you were exposed at a younger age. Also, as you more likely to be frail or have other illnesses, the effects can be more grievous to you. Only about 20 percent of individuals who carry the virus actually develop and get the symptoms.
It is easy to confuse chickenpox and shingles as they tend to start with similar symptoms. However, shingles occurs in adults, usually after the age of 50, while chickenpox occurs in children.
Once you are infected by the virus and it settles in, it migrates to the roots of those nerves responsible for maintaining sensation in the skin. especially those in your face, your neck, and the upper part of you body. It lives in these tissues without causing any symptoms until some kind of disturbance triggers a reactivation or awakening of the virus.
The first symptom of the Shingles or herpes zoster infection is often a rash on the skin. Those areas of the skin where the rash appears are typically painful or alternatively and to the contrary may actually feel very numb to touch. Characteristically, the skin rash or blisters appear on only a limited area of the body e.g. Shingles of the eyes.
Many patients have been known to experience severe pain since the virus affects the nervous system. In fact the pain suffered has been compared to that you would receive from being given multiple electric shocks.
Once you are past this phase of the infection you may experience another painful stage – with the rash breaking out into painful blisters. The blisters are caused by the skin getting infected by bacteria and may be full of these organisms so it important that the skin is kept clean to avoid spreading this to other parts of your body with dangerous effects.
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