It s hard to tell why the virus re-emerges in some people and not others and impossible to tell when it s going to crop up again. Certainly, elderly people get it more often than young people, and some individuals are more likely to develop shingles when they re under severe stress or when their immune systems have been weakened. Adults may get shingles after an illness. For cancer patients who are undergoing chemotherapy, compromised immune systems may be a factor in bringing on shingles. What characterizes all of these situations is a weakened immune system in which your body s disease-fighting soldiers, the antibodies, are in short supply.
Stress is one of the biggest causes of reduced antibody production.
Typically, during a shingles outbreak, you have tingling and pain around your torso, neck, or face. Lesions, or small blisters, may break out on the skin near the site of the infected nerve. The pain often lasts from two to four weeks, but in some cases, it can last for months. If it does, you ve moved from shingles to a condition known as postherpetic neuralgia . Once it gets loose, there s no cure for the varicella-zoster virus, but there may be ways to slow it down or limit damage during the outbreak.