Shingles or Herpes Zoster or Zona – This is a disorder in which a rash of small blisters develops on the skin. Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chicken pox.
While the exact cause of shingles is not understood, it is theorized that during an attack of chicken pox, the virus may invade large clusters of neurons (nerve cells). The virus may live dormant within these neurons for years, held in check by the body’s immune system. But if the immune system becomes impaired, perhaps during the normal aging process or as a result of disease, the virus can become activated, causing neurons to become inflamed. Blisters develop on the skin that lies above the inflamed neurons.
Symptoms
The patient first feels pain in the area that will later break out in blisters.
Other initial symptoms include fever, headache, muscle soreness, fatigue, stomach upset, and diarrhea. After three to five days of these initial symptoms, the blisters appear, often accompanied by burning and tingling. The blisters are usually confined to one side of the body, most commonly in an area extending from the upper half of the spine to the breastbone. The face, abdomen, arms, and legs may also be affected. The rash usually goes away after a few weeks without complications. About 50 percent of shingle-sufferers over age 60 have persistent skin irritation and pain in the affected area for as long as six months.
A single attack of shingles usually leads to lifelong immunity against further outbreaks.
Treatment
Allopathic management
This may include the use of calamine lotion to relieve itching. A lidocaine patch, a stretchy bandage coated with a long-acting topical anesthetic, may be applied to the painful area to numb affected nerve endings and temporarily relieve pain. In addition, a physician may prescribe antidepressants and other drugs that help calm inflamed nerves, lessening pain. When shingles is diagnosed in the patients with suppressed immune systems, such as those with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or cancer, the antiviral drug acyclovir has some effect.
Homoeopathic Treatment
Apis mellifica
Burning and Stinging pain, much swelling.
Vesicles large, sometimes confluent.
Come out in cold weather.
Ulcerate with great burning, stinging pain.
Worse warmth: better cold applications.
Arsenicum album
Confluent herpetic eruptions with intense burning of the blisters.
Sleepless after midnight.
Nausea and prostration: weakness.
Worse from cold of any kind, better from warmth.
“Herpes having a red, unwholesome appearance”.
Carboneum oxygenisatum
Herpetic vesicles on the temple in the place where the redness had been noticed.
Herpes zoster on the left side of the face along the course of the trigeminus; vesicles on the forehead, above the orbit, along the course of the ramus frontalis, the cheek below the orbit, along the course of the ramus frontalis, on the cheek below the orbit, along the terminal filament of the infraorbital nerve of the chin, along the mental nerve.
A dozen herpetic vesicles, as large as a pin’s head, on the inner portion of the right forearm, somewhat externally to the place where the redness had been noticed; the subcutaneous tissue seemed to be somewhat swollen.
About twenty herpetic vesicles, as large as a pin’s head, along the course of the right sciatic nerve, situated upon a slightly red base; from them some red streaks extend up to the right nates, and from the point of exit of the sciatic nerve to the crest of the ilium.
Mezereum
With severe neuralgic pains.
Itching, after scratching, turns to burning.
Worse from touch: in bed.
Vesicles from a brownish scab.
Ranunculus bulbosus
One has over and over again seen shingles clear up rapidly with 2 or 3 doses of Ran. b. in high potency.- 10 m.
Vesicles filled with thin, acrid fluid.
Burning itching vesicles in clusters.
Worse from touch, motion, after eating.
Severe neuralgic pains, especially intercostal.
Rhus toxicodendron
“Probably no remedy more often found useful in Herpes zoster.
Especially when it occurs after a wetting.
Variolinum
BURNETT said Variolinum had wiped out the condition, pain and all- and one has seen this also.
(c) Dr. Rajneesh Kumar Sharma
Homoeo Cure & Research Centre P. Ltd.
N.H. 74, Moradabad Road, Kashipur- Uttaranchal
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