What is shingles?

What is shingles is a question that people suffering from this condition seek the answer to. In answering this question it is essential to first understand what does shingles look like and how do you get shingles.

What is shingles? Shingles is a painful rash that usually needs several weeks to go away and usually appears on one side of the body or face.

Shingles is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox virus. What are shingles can be explained by looking into how the virus activates. Once someone has had the chickenpox virus and has recovered from it, the virus remains in the body, but it stays inactive. Years later, in some people, the virus may reactive, but this time the person will not get chickenpox but will get shingles instead. Shingles virus spreads along the nerve it affects and causes skin rash in the same area along with the pain.

If it impossible to catch shingles from an infected person, you can only get shingles if you had the chickenpox virus before. However, it is possible to catch chickenpox either from contact with a chickenpox infected person or shingles infected one, if you haven’t had chickenpox before.

What is shingles is a tricky question. It is not yet completely understood what causes the reactivation of the chickenpox virus, therefore the cause of shingles is not yet clear. There are reasons to believe, nonetheless, that immune deficiency, caused by such illnesses as cold, for example, may trigger for the virus to activate.

People who have cancer or those whose immune system is weak in general are also a high risk group for developing shingles. Opposed to people whose immune system is healthy, people who have AIDS and have taken immune suppressive medication or have received radiation treatment of chemotherapy for treating cancer are more likely to be diagnosed with shingles as well.

It is more common for people over 50 to develop shingles, although in some rare cases it is possible for younger people to get it too. This can be explained by looking into the lifestyle of an older person. Some things may change as we age that may contribute to the weakening of the immune system.

What do shingles look like? Shingles is a rash that first begins with red bumps that later on become fluid-filled blisters. After some time these blisters become cloudy, pop open and crust over.

However, the rash is not the only symptom. Prior to rash, such a symptom as pain occurs. Pain can be burning or tingling and typically is severe. In about 2 to 3 days after the appearance of the pain rash occurs.

It takes about five days for the rash blisters to complete the cycle of appearing, blooming, and crusting over. It may take for the skin up to 5 weeks to completely heal and come back to normal.

Treatment of shingles requires antiviral medication. Such remedies as lotions, pain killers for relieving the pain, corticosteroids, and antibiotics for treating the infection that may occur if the blisters get bacteria are used.

There is a way to prevent shingles. A vaccine named Zostavax has been developed in order to do so. This vaccine, however, does not guarantee that you will not develop shingles it certainly reduces the odds.