Shingles Risk High During Holidays: Who Should Be Careful

Many people break their original lifestyle and eating habits during the holidays and especially enjoy ‘revengeful all-nighters’ and ‘excessive travel’. If you do this, the body’s immunity will drop and the varicella-zoster virus, which is latent in the body, can take advantage of this gap and become activated.

Who are susceptible to shingles?

Guo Lixin, chief doctor of the endocrinology department at Beijing Hospital (National Medical Center): The risk of diabetic patients getting shingles is 60% higher than that of the general public. Diabetic patients have reduced cellular and humoral immunity and a reduced ability to resist infection. In particular, if you do not rest properly and control your blood sugar levels during the holidays, your immunity is likely to decline. According to research, once a diabetic patient contracts shingles, the difficulty in controlling blood sugar levels increases significantly, increasing the likelihood of hospitalization and worsening blood sugar control, affecting all aspects of the patient.

Who should get the shingles vaccine?

Li Humin, Chief Doctor of Dermatology, Peking University People’s Hospital: If you are over 50 years old and have never had shingles, you should get vaccinated. The protection of the vaccine is still very good, and current evidence shows that it can provide protection for more than 10 years, significantly reducing the chance of developing shingles.

What early symptoms indicate that you may have shingles?

Lihumin: The nerves that shingles attacks are distributed on one side. Shingles should be suspected when something is wrong with one side of the chest, back, waist, or one upper limb, lower limb, or one side of the head and face, and there is a pinprick feeling, slight itching, or numbness, or discomfort in the lower back. These symptoms can become worse when clothes rub or change positions.

A few days after this feeling appears, redness first appears at the painful area, which then turns into blisters. Experts advised that there is a clear ‘golden time window’ for shingles treatment. The golden time for treatment is within 72 hours of the appearance of shingles symptoms, and the more active treatment is, the lower the chance of it leading to chronic pain.