Here’s the latest scoop on shingles, and it’s already too late to do anything about it. That is, you’ll know it when you have it. I’m getting the shingles shot on the 29th of this month. I’ll shiver to the core when somebody says “there’s a vaccine for that,” but I don’t care. I’m getting the jab.
This from the Mayo Clinic: “Shingles is a viral infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus responsible for chickenpox. It occurs when the dormant chickenpox virus reactivates in the body.”
About 1 in 3 people in the United States develop shingles during their lifetime. Shingles can affect the young and old, but the odds of shingles increases with age. Shingles is not a life-threatening disorder, but it can be painful.
Here’s more information:
- People who develop shingles have a 59 percent higher risk of heart attack than those who don’t get the viral infection. That’s according to a report published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which also claims there’s a 35 percent higher risk of stroke for those who get shingles.
- The report says the risks of both stroke and heart attack were highest the first year after the onset of shingles and decreased with time.
The pain of shingles do not end with the incident. The results could be forever in one’s lifetime, and researchers have now found that an incident of shingles reduces knowing, learning, and understanding things known as cognition by 20%.
Some people will develop, for example, postheripetic neuralgia, once the rash disappears, a throbbing in the nerves and skin that lingers, or ophthalmic shingles with acute eye pain which can turn into vision loss.
Shingles is also linked to brain inflammation (otherwise known as encephalitis), facial paralysis, and hearing or balance issues.
That’s why adults aged 50 and older are asked to take Shingrix vaccine, the only FDA-approved vaccination against shingles.
“Our findings show long-term implications of shingles and highlight the importance of public health efforts to prevent and promote uptake of the shingles vaccine,” said co- author Dr. Sharon Curhan, Channing Division for Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“Given the growing number of Americans at risk for this painful and often disabling disease and the availability of a very effective vaccine, shingles vaccination could provide a valuable opportunity to reduce the burden of shingles and possibly reduce the burden of subsequent cognitive decline,” Dr. Curhan added.
The CDC says that new research finds that shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is the same pathogen responsible for chickenpox. The chickenpox virus enters a dormant state in the body after the person gets well but reactivates and is called shingles
The virus that causes chickenpox and shingles can be spread from a person with active shingles to a person who has never had chickenpox or the chickenpox vaccine. But the person exposed to the virus would then develop chickenpox, not shingles.
The Mayo Clinic says the most usual symptoms include pain, red rashes, fluid-filled blisters, and itchiness. But some people may also get fever, sensitivity to light, fatigue, and a headache.Â
The team of researchers writes, “They analyzed data from around 2 million people 50 and up for the new study. They compared the rate of shingles in those who contracted COVID-19 (a total of 394,677 individuals) and those who never got infected with SARS-CoV-2 (1,577,346 individuals).
“After analyzing their collected data, the team found that people who battled COVID-19 had a 15% higher risk of developing shingles than those who didn’t. The risk was notably higher at 21% in COVID-19 survivors who got hospitalized during their bout with the virus.”
So please call your pharmacy and get the shingles jab. Getting the shot won’t 100% keep you from getting shingles but will lessen your chance. The vaccine may reduce how bad shingles is and how long it lingers.
Also, the jab can lower the risk of shingles complications that causes shingles pain to go on long after the blisters have disappeared.
Simply look at the featured image at the top of this page. Convinced? I say, “Ewww! Hell, yes!”