What causes postherpetic neuralgia?
Postherpetic neuralgia results when nerve fibers are damaged during a case of shingles. Damaged fibers aren’t able to send messages from your skin to your brain as they normally do. Instead, the messages become confused and exaggerated, causing chronic, often excruciating pain that may persist for months — or even years — in the area where shingles first occurred. Neuralgia is caused by irritation or nerve damage from systemic disease, inflammation, infection, and compression or physical irritation of a nerve. The location of the pain depends on the underlying condition that is irritating the nerve or the location of the particular nerve that is being irritated. Neuralgia can result from tooth decay, poor diet, eye strain, nose infections, or exposure to damp and cold. Later in life, the virus can reactivate and travel along the nerves that supply certain areas of the skin, causing damage to these nerves. Once the virus reaches the skin, it may cause an outbreak of rash blisters that m
