Those awful shingles

Those awful shingles... Can anyone forget that painful experience after getting them once? Also called herpes zoster, this acute inflammation of the nerve ganglia, with a skin eruption often forming a girdle around the middle of the body, can make your life absolutely unbearable. Herpes zoster is caused by the same virus as chickenpox, and you do not have to catch it from an infected person again to fall ill with shingles. Unfortunately, if you had chickenpox in your early years, the virus stays in your system for ever. It does not usually do any harm when it sleeps (when it is latent, to put it in scientific terms), but when the virus wakes up, it can become a real pain in the neck, literally and figuratively.

So, what can we do to deal with it? We cannot say "to get rid of it" because it can hardly be done, but treating shingles is quite possible. We are going to discuss every aspect of it on this weblog. Please, feel free to comment and share opinions.