Why does chicken pox cause shingles later on in life?
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99% of adults have had chickenpox at some stage of their life. After infection when you’re a kid, the virus lies dormant in your nerve cells for the rest of your life. It can randomly reactivate in adulthood when an nerve cell or a few nerve cells gets triggered by stress, another infection or immune system being under attack, sometimes theres no cause.
The awakened virus fizzes out that nerve cell onto the surface of the skin usually causing the classic shingles symptoms – blisters, pain and itching. These occur where the nerve cell is located. More nerve cells are attached to the spine than anywhere else which is why the classic grape-like red rash occurs on the torso most often. Shingles can occur anywhere though, depends where the nerve cell in question is, if its in the eye it can get really serious.
Shingles is not contagious. The only thing you can catch from someone suffering from shingles is the chickenpox (and only if you’ve never had the chickenpox) – and you’d need to be touching the shingles blisters directly to catch it
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