Shingles Contagious - Shingles Symptoms

Here are the symptoms of the Shingles disease. Notice that most of these symptoms are the same as for the flu:

- Fever for about four to five days with persistent headache.
- Physical fatigue, or a sudden decline in energy level.
- Problems with the digestive system, the stomach in particular.
- Sudden chills.
- Itching on the area of the body where the rash will soon develop.
- Development of small painful blisters on the person's skin (skin rash) lined up like a belt/band starting from spine to chest is the most distinctive symptom that helps the doctor in developing the diagnosis.
If you don't seek medical help for your Shingles, it will pass through the early stage to a more advanced stage. People suffering from Shingles develop a painful disease called chronic neuralgia over this period as time passes by. In order to avoid this problem, you should be watchful and seek out a physician's help once you think you might have Shingles disease or if you have had Shingles and you are experiencing pain in tissues even after getting rid of the blisters/rash caused by the Shingles disease. This pain can be severe enough to make a person cry, it is called post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN). If not treated properly, Shingles can lead to the following more severe conditions, although this is rare:
- The patient might loose eyesight
- Pneumonia
- Malfunctioning of some organs
- Since Shingles is linked to the nervous system, the patient may develop encephalitis (inflammation of the brain)
- Sometimes this disease can be so severe, it can lead to death
As you can see, Shingles is not something to ignore and hope it will go away. You must seek medical treatment if you think you have Shingles.