Shingles affects millions of adults
in their later years. Each year some one million
adults in the US develop shingles and with increasing
age, approximately twenty per cent go on to
suffer post herpetic neuralgia and intractable pain.
Shingles is a viral infection of the nerve roots causing
pain and a band of rash that usually spreads on one
side of your body. The shingles infection can be divided
into three phases namely:
- The pre-eruptive phase – early symptoms of burning, itching and generally feeling unwell
- The acute eruptive phase – skin lesions appear and there may well be severe pain and
- The chronic phase – persistent pain lasting 30 days or more after the lesions have crusted
It is this last phase which is post
herpetic neuraligia (PHN) and it is during
this last phase where the sufferer can have persistent
or recurring pain for thirty days or more after the
rash itself has crusted. PHN is the most common
complication of shingles and it is a condition
that can be more painful than shingles and in some
cases intolerable. This is why it is so important
to treat shingles itself in the early stages to
shorten the length of the illness and reduce both
the severity of the symptoms and the risk of these
complications.
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PHN
is caused by damage to the nerves. The varicella
zoster virus causes this damage to the nerves.
Nerve fibers send messages from the skin to the brain
but if the nerve fibers are damaged during an outbreak
of shingles, they are not able to send messages in
the normal manner. The body then perceives these mixed
messages as pain. However in most people who develop
PHN, the pain will gradually resolve with time even
though it may take months or, in the very worst cases,
years.
Post Herpetic Neuralgia and “Flower Power”
As most PHN sufferers are over 60, they may well remember the Flower Power years of the 1960s (and San Francisco in particular) with fondness. Now in the 2000s, there are anecdotal testimonies from patients who have suggested that smoking marijuana relieves the pain in much the same way as it relieves the pain of multiple sclerosis.
From a medical point of view, cannabinoids (which are the compounds in marijuana or cannabis and which may have properties that protect nerve cells) are being studied for a number of nerve disorders, including chronic nerve-related pain. So far in one study, it was effective in reducing pain and had no major side effects.
