Toronto-Centre Naturopathic Medicine is a Toronto naturopathic clinic dedicated to providing safe and effective treatment of a wide variety of health conditions using natural therapies and the principles of naturopathic medicine.
Shingles is a well treated using naturopathic medicine. Shingles is a painful, blistering rash that can occur anywhere on your body, but most commonly appears as a band of painful blisters on your trunk.
Shingles is a viral infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. After the symptoms of a chickenpox infection resolve, virus can remains in your body, inactive, in the nerve tissue near your spinal cord and brain. Later in life, possibly when your immune system is weakened, the virus can be reactivated resulting in shingles. Shingles will usually resolve on it’s own in a few weeks, but while active can be very painful.
Complications from shingles results from damage to nervous tissue or infections arising from broken skin of shingles blisters, and may include skin infections, post-herpetic neuralgia (pain that remains after shingles resolves), vision or hearing problems, balance problems, encephalitis (brain inflammation) and facial paralysis.
Professional healthcare should be sought out if you experience symptoms you suspect may be caused by shingles.
Symptoms of shingles
Possible symptoms and signs of shingles include (a rash that):
• Affects only a small area of your skin
• Is preceded by a few days by pain in the skin
• Itches, tingles or has burning pain
• Develops into fluid-filled blisters that break open and crust over
• Fever and chills
• Fatigue
• General aching
• Headache
Rarely, shingles develops with no rash.
Treatment of shingles at Toronto-Centre Naturopathic Medicine
At Toronto-Centre Naturopathic Medicine, the goals of shingles treatment are to reduce pain and shorten duration of infection, prevent potential skin infections, manage side effects of conventional heartburn medications and address potential post-shingles complications.
Conventional treatment for shingles may include, and variety of medications, including antiviral medications (e.g., acyclovir), pain medications (e.g., narcotics such as oxycodone), tricyclic antidepressants, anticonvulsant medications (e.g., gabapentin) and numbing agents such as lidocaine. These medications may have short- or long-term side effects. For this reason, you may choose to try natural treatment to possibly avoid use of conventional medications, or together with conventional medications in order to decrease dosages of conventional medications required to manage your shingles symptoms.
Naturopathic treatment of any chronic health concern must be recognized as a process that involves identifying specific treatment goals, a thorough understanding by your naturopathic doctor of all factors affecting your health, including physical, psychological, emotional and lifestyle factors, development of a comprehensive treatment plan and execution of that plan through periodic monitoring and adjustment.
At Toronto-Centre Naturopathic Medicine, a typical approach to treating shingles may be to first identify and address underlying factors in your lifestyle (e.g., poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, stress, smoking) or general health (e.g., weakened immune system, prolonged use of steroid medications) that may be retarding resolution of your shingles infection, dietary recommendations to support immune system activity and decrease inflammation, botanical (herbal) medicine and nutritional supplement use to manage pain, support immune system activity and heal nervous tissue, and use of acupuncture and homeopathic medicines to address post-shingles complications.
Where appropriate, a number of therapeutic options are available, to be used alone, or more often in a complementary fashion, including:
• Botanical (herbal) medicines
• Nutritional supplements
• Diet therapy
• Homeopathic medicines
• Acupuncture
• Hydrotherapy
• Relaxation techniques
References
Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Shingles [Online]. [cited 2010 Jan 26]; Available from: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/shingles/DS00098 .