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About shingles

Shingle is quite a unique condition that is characterized by painful blisters that erupt on one side of the body or face. These blisters generally occur over the chest, back, abdomen and face of the individual but they can even affect lower back, limbs and neck. The disease could be extremely itchy, painful and tender at the initial stages. When these blisters heal they actually form scabs after a couple of weeks but the patient would still experience pain. The term shingles disease actually comes from a Latin word which actually means belt and this is because the blisters often follow the nerves and appear in a line and generally on one side of the body or back. Most of the people suffer from blisters or shingles only once during their lifetime.

The shingles disease is basically caused by a virus called as Varicella Zoster virus or VZV virus. This virus is a member of herpes virus family and VZV is also the same virus that is responsible for causing chickenpox which is a childhood disease. Even tough most of the people would only experience chickenpox disease once in their lifetime, a weak remainder of the virus still lives in the body for entire life of the person or as long as they remain healthy. However the natural immune system is quite strong to keep the virus fully suppressed and entirely free of symptoms of both shingles and chickenpox.

Stress can cause shingles

You should know that stress can also be a serious impact your body and especially on your immune system. Therefore the stress that is experienced when watching some sports event or when working on high profile projects in your work place are some different kinds of stress that are observed to be good stress and also have positive short term effects on your overall immune system. However according to the APA or American Psychiatric Association, from a long time stress such as employment arrangements and unhappy martial gradually wear down your body and also weaken the natural defenses of the body. Moreover the APA also points out that some additional research could be performed to better understand how stress could affect the body. However some psychological experts claim that a weak immune system is a definitive outcome for different chronic stress and its related diseases.

Therefore when the immune system of the human body becomes weak either through chronic stress or long term and aging or even through some diseases such as HIV the virus that lives in the body could actually overpower the immune system and start to show up symptoms of shingles. Even though the VZV virus is present always in the human body it is usually kept safe by the immune system. So, when this system becomes weak through stress the VZV virus that was then in a sleep state could actually start showing up and take over the immune system. In most of the cases resting would allow the immune system to rebuild and also clear up all the existing symptoms. However some people might also need to visit the doctor to rebuild their weak immune system so that it becomes less prone to stress related diseases such as shingles.

You should know that shingles can only appear in people who have previously suffered from chickenpox. This means that even when chickenpox is cured, the virus still remains in the body but in an inactive state. This means that when your immune system weakens the virus would rebuild in your body and start showing up symptoms of shingles. Some of the main causes for shingles are old age, being run down and weak immune system. Apart form this stress can also be a potential cause for shingles as chronic stress levels usually affect the human immune system.

Generally during stressful situations the body would actually change the way immune system functions which are often done by passing cortisol and adrenaline into the bloodstream.  When it comes to the immune system it would increase the consistency of blood in order to make it sticky and thicker and this is helpful in case of injuries which require blood clotting to seal off the injury. Moreover it can also help increase the overall plasma amount in the blood. In case the body gets injured it would have to fight of the potential disease or bacteria and the immune system would respond by producing more white blood cells that can keep away foreign bodies.

However this is quite acceptable for sudden stress but when the stress is prolonged o when it becomes chronic then the immune system always be on high alert. It also means that the white blood cells would be thicker than normal ones which might have further health complications. So, when it comes to stress, it is found that the immune system become weak and the body is run down which is also caused by stress.