Shingles Disease

People that are suffering from shingles disease often are looking for immediate rash relief. Fortunately for them there are a few natural and holistic shingles rash remedies that have proved helpful for many people. The first and most basic shingles disease relief is to apply cool or cold wet dressings to the affected area. Wet a washcloth or towel, wring it out, and then gently press it to the lesions. Some people put the cloth into the freezer for a while after wetting it to make it colder. Just as coolness is soothing to the lesions, heat is irritating. Avoid heat as well as tight clothes and itchy fabrics like wool.

An excellent topical remedy for shingles disease is an ointment that you can make at home with aspirin and chloroform. (You can probably get chloroform at your pharmacy, but if you can’t, use Vaseline Intensive Care lotion in its place.) Mash up two aspirins (do not use aspirin substitutes) and mix them with two tablespoons of chloroform. Apply this mixture with a clean cotton ball to the shingles lesions. The chloroform the dead skin and any residue, allowing the aspirin to penetrate and deaden the nerve endings that are causing the pain.

Some people find that calamine lotion can relieve the pain and help dry the lesions.

Something else that can give relief is vitamin E, used both orally an on the lesions themselves. While no one is certain exactly why vitamin E is useful in treating shingles, there’s ample evidence that it does wonders for many people. 1 suggest you take vitamin E daily. In addition, can take one or more vitamin E capsules, cut off the tip or stick a into one end, and squeeze it onto the lesions.

Vitamin C is another aid in treating shingles disease. There is speculation vitamin C increases the body’s production of interferon, an infection fighting protein that promotes healing.

The amino acid lysine inhibits herpes activity and can help shorten an attack. You only need to take lysine supplements during the course an outbreak. In addition, avoid arginine-rich foods such as chocolate, peanuts, seeds, and cereal grains. Arginine is another amino acid, but its effect on the virus is the opposite of lysine’s: It promotes herpes growth.

Once the shingles lesions have healed, an ointment called Zostrix may reduce any lingering postherpetic pain you may experience. It is available without prescription from a pharmacy. The important ingredient is capsaicin, which is a naturally occurring irritant found in hot peppers. Like hot peppers, it can sting your eyes or irritate a cut. It might well sting when you first apply it to painful areas on your skin, but it’s supposed to. It works to deplete a substance manufactured by your skin that transmits messages of pain to the brain; by applying Zostrix regularly, this message can’t get through.

There is much speculation as to what actually causes the shingles disease.  The one known factor for what causes the shingles disease is if you have already had the chicken pox when you were younger.  The shingles disease is still being studied to see if there are other contributing factors that would cause an outbreak or for someone to get the shingles disease.

Most research that is ongoing continues to support the theory that if you are over 50 and have had chicken pox, then you are at risk of developing the shingles disease.  This is because the shingles disease is really the chicken pox virus that has been dormant in your body.  It is reactivated or flares up as shingles when your immune system is weakened.

When you are older, and as a natural aging process, your immune system weakens.  This can allow the chicken pox virus to reactivate or flare up and travel down the nerves of your body and cause a shingles disease outbreak.

Anyone with a weakened immune system is at risk of developing shingles disease if they have had chicken pox in the past.  They are also at a higher risk of contracting the shingles disease if they come into contact with someone that has an active outbreak of shingles.  The weakened immune systems can be from lymphoma, cancer, HIV/AIDS or any other illnesses that can cause a weakened immune system.

The shingles disease seems to be mostly prevalent in people over 50.  There doesn’t seem to be any support for other causes of the shingles disease.  The most recent data still is pointing to the main factors of getting shingles as being having chicken pox when being younger and being over 50 years of age.

The shingles disease is from the herpes zoster virus and is a painful condition that is caused by the reactivation of the childhook chicken pox in adults. The chickenpox virus that you are familiar with from childhood is not like the shingles disease of adulthood. The shingles disease rash usually affects only a small part of the body, often times looking like a row of bumps instead of the widespread bumps of chicken pox.

The most common shingles rash usually follows the nerve paths on one side of the body. Most often it is found on the abdomen, back, neck, face or scalp and generally doesn’t go all the way around the body. The shingles disease is most often found in people over 50, however it can affect children also. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female as both sexes are equally affected by shingles.

One of the most frustrating parts of the shingles disease is that once it occurs, your chances of reoccurance are extremely high. Often the subsequent times a shingles flareup occurs it is found on or around the original spot from the first attack.

If you have shingles disease of the face, it will usually affect the nose and eyes. If part of the eye is affected, especially the cornea, the condition is known as zoster keratitis. The zoster keratitis shingles disease is extremely painful and if not treated promptly can affect the cornea with scar tissue that can lead to blindness. If you have any shingles symptoms that are affecting your face or head, you should seek the advice of your physician immediately. If you have a shingles attack and your nose or face is tingling, you could have deep facial involvement.

One of the longer lasting symptoms of the shingles disease is continued pain where the rash had been. When the nerve is affected as it is with shingles, the pain can last well after any flareup. If you have shingles on your face, you will also have prolonged shingles pain because when the trigeminal nerve, which supplies the face is affected with shingles, there are so many nerves in your face that it can linger for months.

Some people have reported having shingles disease pain without any signs of a rash. This is not uncommon, but is rather rare. When this happens, the condition known as zoster sine herpete, there can be severe pain in the chest or back that is so severe that people can mistake it for a heart attack or back injury. Never discount any signs of chest pain and attribute it to just a shingles disease flareup.

The rash blisters from the shingles disease can be contagious until they scab over. Until that time you need to use caution around children or anyone that has never had the chicken pox virus. The shingles disease can be painful and it can also be treated.