You’ll probably find it ugly and irritating but it’s most often considered harmless and disappears quickly, never to return.
Not so fast though!
Shingles Links to Increased Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke
Ironically, it may be more serious, the better your apparent cardiovascular health is.
Korean scientists used the database of the National Health Insurance Service to follow 519,880 people for a period of 10 years.
During this time, they discovered 23,233 new cases of shingles.
They found that shingles raised the risk of stroke by 35%, heart attack by 59% and overall cardiovascular diseases by 41%.
Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke Initially High Then Reduces Over Time
The risk of heart attack and stroke was highest during the first year of shingles diagnosis and gradually decreased over time.
The risk of heart attack after a shingles diagnosis dropped from a 1.7-fold increase in risk in the first week, to a 1.3-fold increase in risk two to four weeks after the diagnosis, to a 1.1-fold increase in risk five to 12 weeks after the diagnosis. Again, by week 27, the risk returned to baseline.
This increased risk of heart attack and stroke is likely due to the biological effects of a shingles infection.
For example, inflammation from having shingles could lead to a blood clot, which in turn could cause a stroke or heart attack, according to the study.
Shingles may also bring on incidents of elevated blood pressure, due to pain or stress associated with the disease, according to the study.
Interestingly, the shingles-related stroke risk was highest for people under 40 years, the group with the best cardiovascular indicators like blood pressure and cholesterol. This suggests something other than the usual mechanisms might be responsible for the strokes.
But why do people get shingles?
Shingles occur in people who had chickenpox as a child when the virus gets reactivated for some unexplained reason. Most often at an older age.
Typically, decades later, when a person who had chickenpox has some dip in immune resistance, the virus travels along a sensory nerve to the skin, where it can replicate and cause painful, burning rashes and blisters.
The nerve inflammation it causes can persist for weeks and even months, and for an unlucky few, the resulting nerve damage can bring unrelenting pain.
It’s been known that when the shingles virus travels along the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve in the face, and affects the area surrounding an eye, the patient has a nearly five-fold risk of heart attack and stroke in the year following.
Because we don’t know why this happens, the only thing you can do to avoid shingles is to strengthen your immune system to fight the virus immediately as it gets reactivated before it flares up to your skin.
But shingles are of course not the most common cause of stroke and heart attack. The most important thing is to focus on…
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