Shingles is a nerve disease, not a skin disease
Most people who get shingles remember the rash. What they do not forget is the pain that follows it, a condition called post-herpetic neuralgia, where damaged nerve fibres keep firing long after the skin has cleared. This can last months. In some adults over 70, it persists for more than a year. The varicella-zoster virus, the same one that causes chickenpox, never fully leaves the body. It retreats into the dorsal root ganglia, clusters of nerve tissue along the spinal cord, and waits. Decades later, when immunity weakens with age, it reactivates. The rash is just the visible part of a deeper nerve attack.
