How Shingles Can Make You Blind (Strong Warning!)

Shingles are horrible. The itch, the pain, the discomfort, and sometimes the months of aftereffects.

Blindness is not on the risk list most of us make for ourselves.

But we should, according to a new study published in La Revue de Medecine Interne, or the French Journal of Internal Medicine. Blindness caused by shingles is much more common than you think.

In a review of the literature on the relationship between viral infections and eye diseases, they found that herpes viruses were the most common culprits, primarily because they reoccur over time.

Herpes simplex, the virus that remains dormant in our bodies and repeatedly reactivates to cause fever blisters, is the greatest risk because it reactivates so often. But herpes zoster, the chickenpox virus that lies dormant in our bodies and later manifests as shingles, is not far behind.

Between 10% and 20% of all shingles cases occur in or near the eyes.

Because the virus travels along neural pathways, you can often feel it traveling in a line up or down your body on one side before a rash appears.

When it involves the eyes, the rash and blisters most commonly appear on your forehead, on the tip of your nose, and on your eyelids. This happens because some of the nerves that serve your eyes, and through which the virus can travel, run through these regions.

You may also experience headaches, eye pain, redness, eye watering, blurry vision, and sensitivity to light.

The danger of this condition is that it can cause inflammation of your cornea, a condition called keratitis, which happens to be the most common cause of blindness in the world.

If your cornea remains inflamed, its cells can start to die and scar tissue can form. Since the cornea is the transparent layer that forms the front of your eye, scar tissue causes your cornea to become opaque and will block light from passing through. This is when blindness occurs.

Uveitis is another common consequence of eye shingles. This is inflammation of the uvea, which is the pigmented layer of your eye that lies beneath your sclera and cornea, on top of your retina. Inflammation can cause scar tissue here too.

Your retina, which is the layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of your eye that trigger the nerve impulses sent to your brain, is also in the firing line.

If these cells become inflamed, they can also die, in a condition experts call retinal necrosis. This will cause you to lose your light vision.

Possibly because the nerves in and around your eyes are so close to your brain, the scientists found that eye shingles pose a stroke risk in the first year after the episode. During this period, people with eye shingles have a 4.3 times higher risk of stroke than other shingles patients.

If your immune system is weakened, you have an autoimmune disease, you are female, or you’re above 50 years of age, you carry the greatest risk that shingles will move into your eyes. But everyone is at great risk.

The bottom line is that you absolutely must treat your shingles as quickly as possible to avoid these and other dire consequences. Here is the exact protocol thousands of readers have used to eliminate their shingles in days…