Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM, offers a fresh perspective on treating the Shingles virus. In TCM, your body is an ecosystem. When your body is out of balance, you are vulnerable to sickness within. At ParkView Health and Wellness Center each patient has a customized treatment that tunes their environment.
Shingles are more than just a few blisters on your skin. Shingles hurt because of their deep connection to the nervous system. The virus expresses inflammation and builds pressure. Early treatment of shingles can help prevent or ease your pain.
Symptoms of Shingles
Shingle's patients can experience mild or severe symptoms anywhere on the body. The virus is most commonly on one side of the torso but can appear anywhere on the body. If shingles trigger anywhere on the upper half of your face seek medical attention, your eyesight is in danger.
While shingles is not a life-threatening condition it can cause scarring and be extremely painful. The most common symptoms of an infected area include:
- Pain, burning or tingling
- sensitive to touch
- red rash or itching
- fluid-filled blisters
Herpes Zoster, or shingles, is a virus that lives in your spinal column after a chickenpox infection. This virus is found within, it waits for a chance to grow itself.
What Activates Shingles?
An environment that is opportune for shingles involves heat, stagnation, and/or dampness.
Heat can be generated in two ways. Your body will store internal heat when you remain inactive for prolonged periods of time. Heat is also generated through emotional distress. Our emotions are as much physical as they are mental and play an equal role in your healthcare.
Stagnation refers to the pooling of inactive blood cells. Blood stasis occurs from any imbalance in the body. For example, nutrient deficiency can reduce circulation, increase swelling, and lead to inflammation. Another example is emotional stress. Your body developed tight muscles and slower blood flow from conditions like depression.
Dampness in TCM describes the internal conditions of your body to be phlegmy, clammy, sluggish, swollen, groggy, or cold. All damp conditions will eventually cause stagnation. Improving your diet is the best way to improve excessive dampness in the body.
How to Treat Shingles
Since shingles is a reactivation of a dormant virus, we need to treat the body to expel the virus, determine what reactivated it, and retrain the nervous system. Restoring the body to optimal conditions will stop the virus. At ParkView Health and Wellness Center we determine any abnormal levels of heat, blood stagnation, or internal dampness.
Acupuncture is the perfect treatment to reduce heat, stagnation, and dampness. The needle's insertion treats heat from physical ventilation.
Acupuncture uses needles to stimulate the natural release of endorphins in the body, which can help to promote circulation throughout the body. The needles are left in place on the body, during which time the practitioner may manipulate the needles in order to strengthen or reduce the flow of Qi.