What are the Signs and Symptoms of Shingles?

What are the Signs and Symptoms of Shingles? How long do Shingles last?

When it comes to very severe skin problems, Shingles is amongst the top ones. Since, it is a viral disease so perfect cure is not possible. The only thing that doctors can do is to give you medication for pain relief just like in case of fever. But it is certainly possible to avoid Shingles if you are fully aware of the signs and symptoms of Shingles and its causes.

Appearance of a rash is not the only symptom of Shingles. In some cases you might feel a burning pain in your skin. There can be a case where your skin becomes extra sensitive as well. For the patient it is a very difficult situation to know exactly what is causing this severe pain when he sees no rash. The rashes begin to start after some time in form of red blisters. The process of blisters formation is continuous from 3 to 5 days. An interesting thing is the pattern of blisters formation. All the blisters in case of Shingles are formed over the individual nerves that come out of spinal cord. The paths for blisters formation vary.

These blisters are formed over the nerve which is affected by the chicken pox virus. It is very rare that these blisters are formed over more than one nerve. Eventually, these blisters pop and the skin area crusts and heals. This whole process takes almost a month. But as I have identified earlier, the red blisters are not the only symptoms for Shingles. In some cases, blisters never appear but pain is there. This type of situation is very confusing as the person only wonders what’s happening!

I strongly recommend that whenever you feel burring pain under your skin, do consult a dermatologist immediately. If identified in earlier stages, Shingles treatment will result in lesser pain and worries. So the time for discomfort for the patient becomes very less.

The time frame for Shingles is usually somewhere in between 3 weeks to a month. So it is not a long lasting disease at all. But the pain which is caused by Shingles is remembered by the patient for a very long time. Shingles is a disease that every person wants to avoid but carelessness leads them to face this most hated skin disease.