incase someone getting shingles/zoster/gordelroos one day happens to land on this post - as AI algorithms get better you never know…
so 1st off google to find out what it is, for as you grow older you might get it. very important, it is the same virus as chickenpox, so avoid getting in touch with young ones who haven’t had their chickenpox shots!
‘remedies’ are a-plenty and as usual 99% false and aimed to get your money!
in the 1st 72 hours after blisters form try to get antiviral medication as it is said to help prevent a- your chances of getting it again and b- it might cut down the duration; which under normal circumstances is about 6 weeks [or longer] to as little as 4 weeks.
whilst the sores break open apply calamine lotion [mostly zinc oxide/iron oxide], it is cheap but messy - it soothes and absorbs fluid; show me the fool who cares about looks when he is in pain!
try to keep the affected area cool - i found that cool air from a fan is great, a car’s aircon on full blast is pure bliss - [put a piece of cotton wool in your ear against the wind] - cold wet/ice and damp cloth will also help - cold shower or in nordic countries some snow avoid direct sun! avoid alcohol! avoid smoking/vaping [nicotine]! avoid spicy stuff and too much caffeine! don’t scratch or even touch, SIT ON YOUR HANDS
as soon as the blisters stop breaking i can advise aerosol deep freeze/cold spray - just don’t let it get into your eyes - if the outbreak is near an eye have some good eye drops handy!
wherever you go try and take the little battery powered fan along - i even attended church with it - don’t worry about what others think, it is your wellbeing which is at stake and if you are in pain they will soon regret it; for short-tempered you will be!
there are expensive immunizations against it but not only do they cost a lot, you also have to take two or more and repeat the circus every couple of years and there are no guarantees they will actually help - typical big-pharma marketing exploits?!
drink fluid; avoid stress, rest [you don’t have to sleep, just get your favourite audio with earphones and close your eyes]
as i write this the end of this rather painful nerve disease is in sight for me… for now - and i wish someone gave me these tips - obviously there is more to it, but i have covered some basics which even some medical doctors who never personally had to go through this would not know.
me feigning to be amused with calamine lotion all over the show 3 weeks ago:
Remember a while ago, with the Monkeypox scare, how many experts were telling us it’s all a conspiracy to turn shingles into something worse? Sometimes people are just so deliciously terrorisable.
I got shingles in the army. Very unpleasant. Calamine lotion was very helpful. I also got several days light duty.
We had no doctors, they were all up on the border. The medics gave me the lotion but nothing else and would not administer it (they wouldn’t even touch me). A civvy doctor was called when more cases were reported. He examined the sick, forecast that still more was coming (he was right) and, I was told, went down to the mess and kicked up a ruckus about our poor rations. They, I was told, asked if he had any rank to show them otherwise they weren’t interested in his nonsense.
It’s not nice. I’d had chickenpox as a kid, and I don’t believe there was a vaccine available then (60s, UK). In fact when somebody in the street had chickenpox in the house we were all sent to play there to get it over and done with.
I haven’t had the vaccine. I should. Risk increases with age, and it was bad enough when I was a youngster.
Thanks for the heads up. It’s an unpleasant sickness.
One of my kids had the vaccine. The other one did not (no stock at the time).
Both of them got chickenpox, at the same time, although my son (who was vaccinated) had it much MUCH lighter.
We might not even have known if it wasn’t absolutely clear from the timing that my son contracted it from my daughter.
I have no idea to what extent the vaccine would prevent shingles later in life, if at all. It does seem that a “booster” later in life does significantly remind the immune system of the existence of the virus, and helps to prevent shingles.
On the topic of boosters: During the pandemic a lot of people made fun of the boosters. The existence of boosters, to them, proved that the vaccine was no good. The trouble, of course, is just about every vaccine you received as a child had two or three boosters. You just don’t remember, since the last one was probably when you were ten years old. Maybe the name is just unfortunate, as it does not clearly describe the purpose of this additional shot: It is to make sure your body understands the importance of what is happening, and launches a proper immune response.
Somewhere… deep in the cells of the body:
Immune system: What, YOU again? Guess I’m gonna need a bigger army!
… immune system goes off and builds a cannon to swat a fly with… bang bang bang. Now stay dead!
Guess I’ll keep the canon around… just in case. Hey, T-cell, you store this somewhere for me, will ya?
Exactly the same thing with the flu vaccine. The first time you get a flu vaccine as a toddler you must get another one four weeks later for exactly the same reason.
A booster is just another dose of the same thing you got the first time. Immune response tends to fade over time, which is why you repeated the treatment. If you were okay the first time, it is incredibly unlikely that you’d be affected by the same thing later.
There are some exceptions to this. As an example, I know that people can (over time) develop increased responses to bee stings. The first one might be mild, but then the body develops an immune response where the response ends up being worse than the thing it is responding to. So far, when it comes to our favourite vaccine, there is just nothing in there that is going to do that. It has no preservatives, you are either allergic to the lipids used to cover the mRNA… or you are not, and the rest is PH correction and buffers (stuff that keeps the PH where it should be). What remains is the actual “active” material, which is no worse than the virus, and somewhat unavoidable. It’s going to get you every now and then.
In time, I see this becoming like the flu vaccine. Some people know they are allergic to it, and stay away.
The body has multiple layers of defences, starting with really short term (histamine), short term (IgA, IgM antibodies), and then later the slower responses (T-cell and B-cell). Some of it sticks around for years, some of it for only a few weeks.
Sometimes I am reminded of that time Toyota vehicles decided to kill their American hosts. A somewhat understandable response (sometimes), but it was rather weird how it panned out. Suddenly it was a mass phenomenon. Cars were running away, even older cars with a cable throttle was suddenly doing the same thing, it was a massive phenomenon with at least 50 cases that were considered plausible out of hundreds of reports.
Toyota fitted new floormats and did a recall for a completely different issue that also involved the throttle pedal. And the issue disappeared as quickly as it started.
I am quite sure that a heap of people who had adverse effects to the vaccine, had it for the same reasons, and those adverse effects will disappear over time as it becomes less fashionable to have them.
Reading on forums about “that” vaccine, sitting and listening to a group of doctors (growing by the month) discussing what each found, what worked for their patients, things happening to patients that were nowhere near the “danger zone” yet by a decade or more, their own stats driving the discussions … I think I would rather lean towards their more medical savvy advice, based on their stats.
Inherently prone to selection bias. If I want to find broken Isuzu bakkies, I go to the local Isuzu workshop. Similarly, if I want to know all the ways things went wrong, I ask the doctors.
That doesn’t mean we dismiss what the doctors say. Of course we listen, and we strive to make those numbers even better. Historically this also happened, with Polio for example. The first polio vaccine was a “live” vaccine. It saved thousands of lives, but in a small number of cases… it actually gave people polio. Around the 1940s, the “dead” version was developed, and since then it is essentially harmless.
there are two vaccines against shingles in sa,zostavax and shingrix.
the zostavax is one made with live virii and the shingrix with dead ones.
the zosatvax seems to have been discontinued in 2022 and the shingrix can seemingly only be obtained through traveldr-sa - there is stock in houtbay, cpt; you need two shots six months apart @ R7000 per shot, i.e. R14000 total - and then there is still a chance the stuff isn’t fully effective; so if you’re income justifies it, its worth a shot - pun?
moneyspinner vaccine… just before THE pandemic… attention all conspiracy guys!
yip - that should be worth your while; in germany the stuff is 10k for 2 shots - not breaking the cold chain though is the main problem if you want to import! at 14k the right stuff in sa should be ok and i would be going for it too if i were still working!
edit
… that is earning an income dependent on my health… so this excludes all govt employees etc
Don’t overanalyse this too much When I say it is prone to selection bias, I’m not dismissing the expertise of the people. I’m saying they don’t see the whole spectrum, they see only the bad data points.
A healthy man doesn’t go to the doctor. A man with a running bakkie doesn’t go to the mechanic.
As a result, the doctor gets a skewed view of how common a particular affliction is, and the mechanic might get a skewed view of how good a certain brand is.
A mechanic might fix twice as many Hiluxes, but that might be because in his town, twice as many people drive a Hilux. A doctor might be seeing a lot of people with covid-related effects, but given just how many people got covid in the last 4 years, and that there was no baseline immunity, that might not be surprising.
In tech support we have the same issue. The happy people don’t complain. You get only negative signal.
- cold wet/ice and damp cloth will also help - cold shower or in nordic countries some snow 
