Richard Podell, MD, explains shingles – a herpes virus activation that may affect a significant proportion of FM and CFS patients

From: ImmuneSupport.com
by Richard Podell, MD

Did you have chicken pox as a child? If so - and especially if you’re a Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patient with immune vulnerabilities - you are at risk for the pain of a shingles attack. FM/CFS specialist Richard Podell, MD,* a clinical professor at New Jersey’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, explains:

• Acute shingles, chronic shingles pain, and heightened pain sensitivity (allodynia),


• Why it's important to seek treatment immediately,


• The wide range of possible treatments, depending on pain severity and duration – from antivirals to nutrients that may encourage nerve repair.

Shingles and Chronic Shingles Pain – The Right Treatment Can Help

Shingles pain is a delayed complication of childhood infection with the chicken pox virus, varicella zoster, a form of herpes virus. After childhood chicken pox, varicella virus remains within nerve cells in the spinal cord in a kind of long-term hibernation. However, among about half of us the hibernating virus can wake up and become active. This is the disease we know as shingles.

Shingles pain begins when the varicella virus "wakes," becomes infectious, and migrates from the spinal cord down through the long filament or axon of a nerve. In addition to shingles pain, we usually see a line of tender vesicles or blebs [blisters] on the skin over the path of the infected nerve.

Shingles treatments can reduce shingles pain if we start an anti herpes virus drug within the first two or three days of symptoms. Such shingles treatment medicines include...

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Richard Podell, MD, explains shingles – a herpes virus activation that may affect a significant proportion of FM and CFS patients