No doubt you’ve heard about the rash at some point, but…what is shingles? And is it something you even need to worry about before your sixties? Apparently, yes.
Almost one out of every three people in the U.S. will develop shingles at some point in their life, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Anyone can get it—even children—but the risk of developing it increases as you get older. Specifically, about half of all cases happen in men and women who are 60 or older.
Shingles is a viral infection caused by the varicella zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. It shows up as a painful rash, which can happen anywhere on your body but usually appears as a single stripe of blisters on either the left or right side of your body.
“Shingles is a reactivation of the chickenpox virus that has remained dormant in nerves for years following the initial infection,” Richard Watkins, M.D., an infectious disease physician and associate professor of internal medicine at Northeast Ohio Medical University, tells SELF. Basically, once you have had chickenpox, that same virus can crop up again as shingles at any point in the future.
It's more common to develop shingles at an older age, since your immune system diminishes a little over time, which allows the virus to reactivate, board-certified infectious disease specialist Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior associate at the John’s Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells SELF. But shingles can certainly show up in young people, too. “If you get in high stress situations or have chronic stress situations, it can cause alterations in your immune function and allow the virus to reactivate,” Dr. Adalja says.
Shingles isn’t usually dangerous, but the lesions it causes can be very painful, Dr. Watkins says. In rare cases, a person can develop an acute infection of the brain called encephalitis, or an infection of the eye called uveitis, which can cause blindness. People can also develop persistent pain or nerve sensitivity where the shingles blisters appeared, known as post-herpetic neuralgia, which Dr. Adalja says can be debilitating.
The biggest indicator is often where it's located, since it usually shows up on one side of the body and forms along a nerve route, which is called a dermatome, and it will abruptly stop at the middle of your body, says Dr. Adalja. Another indictor is that the shingles rash blisters before drying and forming scabs, says Dr. Watkins. And these blisters are painful. “They cause a sharp pain, which can be described as electric,” Dr. Adalja says.
If you suspect you have shingles, call your doctor ASAP. There’s no cure for shingles, but catching it early and treating it with antiviral medication like acyclovir or valacyclovir can speed up the healing process and reduce your risk of complications. Since shingles isn't comfortable, your doctor may also prescribe numbing agents, codeine, or a corticosteroid injection, to help with the pain. Shingles typically lasts between two to four weeks, so some patience is required. But with treatment, you should be back to normal pretty quickly.
It’s worth pointing out that there’s also a shingles vaccine, known as Zostavax, which the CDC says reduces the risk of developing shingles by 51 percent and post-herpetic neuralgia by 67 percent. The CDC currently recommends the shingles vaccine for people who are 60 and older, even if you've already had shingles.
Related:
- Yes, Shingles Is Contagious—Kind Of
- A Cleveland Clinic Doctor Wrongly Linked Vaccines with Autism
- Why You Really Don't Want to Get Chickenpox as an Adult
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