Trying to describe to people I haven’t seen for years the health challenges I have so they can relate, I found myself using the word “neuralgia” and this set me off wondering what this typically relates to, what commonly causes it, in terms other people can grasp. This new lead-in (seeing things from other people’s perspective) prompted me to reexamine a very obvious cause, shingles, which I had considered before and yet repeatedly ruled out since – to my recollection – I didn’t have chickenpox as a child. Search for “shingles” on the internet and you will be told that shingles only ever results from a reactivated chickenpox virus; in other words, no chickenpox, no shingles. Thus, guided by the thumb-rule of conventional medical science, I repeatedly IGNORED this whole area of exploration, even though it kept flagging up as a possible cause of my symptoms.
However, it was a no-brainer (given my recent quantum leap in understanding Epstein Barr via this route) to double check this with Anthony William on the Medical Medium’s website since he is starting to make available information that is at least one or two decades ahead of conventional medicine in ways that are having astonishing results. And there it was on his website:
Shingles is an illness that can produce fever, headaches, rashes, joint pain, muscle pain, neck pain, nerve pain, and other highly unpleasant symptoms. Typically, a shingles diagnosis is never made if no rash is present. In reality, however, the shingles virus is responsible for millions of people’s mystery symptoms, from unexplained rashes to neurological symptoms to migraines, and more.
Bingo! Reading on, I find symptoms and experiences where I can tick almost every box across a whole range of different expressions of the shingles virus (begging me to question whether I have more than one of these active at the same time). I was left astonished at the “fit” with my experiences of neuralgia and how they have shifted and evolved over a decade; it was the biggest single light-bulb moment I can remember!
This neuralgia – the biggest and most persistent aspect of my health – delivers severe tooth, ear, jaw and face pain; neck and head pain (including killer migraines); limbs, feet and hands that feel like they have deep glass shards sticking into them; fevers and burning fiery sensations to the whole of my body and agonising leg nerves or sciatica pains plus crawling itches and episodes of numbness. The rash aspect is seldom there for me…well, certainly nothing like the pustules of chickenpox – and yet I have had episodes of unexplainable red rashes on my thighs, severe patches of burn-like rash on my lower back, many episodes of chest rash and, sometimes, whole-torso outbreaks that turn me into red-blotch woman (like a reaction to penicillin) for a few days at a time. I’ve also had odd blisters on one arm only, and on the head, something Anthony William talks about in the audio in his blog. And, yes, frozen-shoulder episodes – this one really got my attention as I never made the connection; though, in fact, my whole adventure into fibromyalgia started with an intense case of frozen-shoulder, which took months of physio and which still comes and goes for no apparent reason at times when my health feels triggered. Reading this article and then listening through the audio felt like one very giant piece of the jigsaw falling into place!
The good news – as ever, all of this can be tackled with diet…those blueberries I’m consuming every day now and a list that includes many of my food and supplement regulars. So if you have any kind of unexplained neuralgia, tricky menopausal symptoms (they simply shouldn’t be happening; they never used to happen to women…and Anthony William explains all), fibromyalgia or any other chronic mystery illness, I highly recommend this article with its attached audio. To me, its delivered huge relief and coherence to bring to an end years of struggle and denial, allowing me to shore up the recovery plan I am already following with more focus and determination than ever.
Recommended
Shingles Virus – medicalmedium.com
(I also suggest Anthony William’s article and audio on Epstein Barr since they often coincide, as is my experience)
Follow-up post on Spinning the Light blog – “Intact”
Here’s a recent post on this topic from the Medical Medium on Facebook.
Disclaimer: This website is not designed (nor should not be construed) to, provide medical advice, professional diagnosis, opinion or treatment to you or any other individual, and is not intended as a substitute for medical or professional care and treatment.
Living whole 
I had shingles in December Helen – it began with severe pains in my neck and shoulders, spread to my face and ear which became swollen and it was only after a couple of weeks that a rash appeared. I did have chickenpox as a child – maybe it just presents in a different way if you haven’t had the virus before.
LikeLike
Hope you have fully recovered from it Andrea…as you know, it is in the same family as Epstein Barr and these viruses have an interesting history relative to women and family history (Anthony William talks about this in depth in his EBV audio, very very interesting!) A significant thread that has now surfaced for me is that my grandma…who came from your very town…had shingles very badly indeed, I don’t get the impression it was a brief thing for her and it frightened my father hugely; he became very fearful around the subject of health relative to the issues his mother had. Seeing how we carry these threads and how they keep emerging…until we untied them through our conscious efforts…continues to fascinate me!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very informative, thanks for posting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for feeding back and just to say the migraines I used to get were horrendous, just so unspeakably awful, and happened more and more often earlier last year ….but I haven’t had one for 6 months and the difference – for me – was the lions mane mushrooms I mention plus following the EPV diet and supplement guidance from the Medical Medium. I havent (ever) take any migraine medication as I dont see a doctor about any of my health issues.
LikeLiked by 2 people
So happy for your relief, migraines are hell. 😦
LikeLiked by 1 person
Really hope you get there too 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Helen, Thanks for this post. I have been looking for a real success story on medical medium protocol for shingles and found your post. I have similar symptoms as yours and tried medical medium raw diet for one month but didn’t find any relief, may it was too short of a time but I just couldn’t do eating raw during the winter time here Chicago. I had had shingles/herpes when I was 24 (40 now) with rashes. I got better within few weeks and since then I didn’t have any episodes.My current symptoms started out of nowhere with forehead crawling sensation to start with, then neck pain and then all sort of burning nerve pain, occasional numbness, headaches etc… After your post, I got curious to know hows your recovery going? Did you fully recover? If you don’t find telling what all supplements you took because there are so many listed in Anthony’s book… I will highly appreciate any information you can share on your recovery.
LikeLike
Hi Swati, thanks for message. Gosh, where to start…certainly its been a long journey and I’m not out of the woods yet but I am so much better in terms of nerve pain and migraine type headaches that used to be so intense and long lasting. My biggest breakthrough with that was through taking a supplement Lions Mane Mushroom which I’ve written about, more than once I think, in this space if you do a search by name. Since taking that twice daily ever since I found it (the one time I ran out for 10 days, headaches and pain started coming back…) I have had no major migraine or head-nerve pain episodes to speak of, or at least nothing lasting longer than a couple of hours (it used to go on for days…). I used to have to go for regular myoafascial pain release to the head and neck area (which I recommend if you can find a knowledgeable practioner) because the pain would be so intense and my face all-electric but have needed that very infrequently for the last year. The work I’ve done to make my environement less “electric” has also been key…which I’ve written about in this blog…but, in summary, I switch all electrics off at night, use wi-fi minimally and don’t ever have a live phone near me (or, if I do, I soon know about it as the nerve pain is intense). Get rid of your DECT cordless phone as they are INTENSE even when not in use (and go back to a wired landline), avoid getting a smartmeter, dont stand close to a switched-on toothbrush charger or transformer-type plug and dump the microwave. Because I do these things, I now cope better “out in the world” around the inevitable EMFs in public places. I swear by taurine before I go to sleep and also theanine which calms the nervous system ready for a good night. I don’t religiously follow the Medical Medium but I do take the particular B12 he recommends along with artic blueberries (I buy them freeze dried), Hawaiian spirullina, zinc, plenty of celery (raw and in cooking), licorice teas (these are great!) lysine, selenium…I also find lemon balm tea absolutely wonderful for calming nerve pain and drink it daily. Skullcap tea is another favourite, which I drink before bed, and raspberry leaf tea settles the hormone over-reactions that can occur around nerve pain and feels very smooth and soothing on the nerves. I recommend you read up about each of these and do a “trial and error” with yourself. Then its been key to work diligently at supporting the endocrine system breakdown or fatigue that many years of harbouring this may have triggered. Without getting too deeply side-tracked into whether or not I have a malfunctioning thyoid etc, I do everything I can to support the thyroid and liver through diet. Also I recommend you don’t do anything that detoxes you too quickly…which can even include many therapies such as massages…since the body, at an advanced stage of this, cant cope with more than a tiny amount of toxin release into the system…so slow and steady is key, accompanied by fresh (not necessarily raw…I also struggle with much raw as it fires up the stomach nerves) food, preferably organic, and loads of “good” water. A huge breakthrough for me has been discovering Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine (which I will be writing about soon) which is easily learned and so palpably effective at restoring correct energy flow in the body, which will be completely “off” if you have been harbouring this virus for years. This means it is very (very!) likely that you are homolateral…that is, your energy flows in straight lines instead of crossing over, as it should, which looks a lot like a DNA spiral. When this happens, it will be effecting your brain and your organs etc and goes all the way down to the cellular level, making you tired, brain-foggy, perhaps overwhelmed, over-sensitive and unable to make lasting headway with recovery protocols as you would be operating at less than 50% capacity. From what I am experiencing so far, Energy Medicine applied daily (there is a 5 minute super-easy routine) can retrain the body’s entire energy system to remedy that and I am working on that currently (again, slow and steady) with such promising results that I am really excited by it (I am doing an 8 week course offered by Mindvalley). You can also find out more on her website, her book and on YouTube. By using the easy tapping-tools she offers, even as I sit here working or get up for a leg stretch, I am retraining the entire nervous system to feel different and its quite tangible to the point I believe it is possible to heal (pretty much if not completely) fully to enjoy a level of being pain-free that already feels new and I only started a couple of weeks ago. Even electro-sensitivity (and food sensitivity) is, I believe, something that can be reversed if Energy Medicine is learned and used as part of life (Donna Eden herself had both until she cured herself)…and that’s what I am working on. Oh and, on Anthony Williams, his thyroid book is next on my list (I already did an hour long call where he runs through the protocol) and I do intend to take that seriously as healing / supporting the thyroid can be so key in unlocking this cycle of body-behaviour. Good luck 🙂
LikeLike
Since experiencing a Colitis outbreak recently, I reread Anthony’s info on Shingles. I can now identify the “mystery” illness I suffered over 30 years ago (which I sometimes wondered was a mild case of meningitis or something, the neck pain was so severe) as an initial exposure to Shingles. The unpleasant “intestinal” side effects started not long afterwards. I’m guessing my headaches are related as well. I tried to find the Lion’s Mane you mentioned, but Amazon was out of stock and I haven’t looked further. I will find it eventually and try it. Thanks for sharing!
LikeLike
I totaly relate to that discovery about the shingles, retrospectively, and how the understanding of what it really was finally drops into place. I am having a flare today and its gone to my gut first; there is no other sensation quite like it…as though the nerves themselves have developed painful nerves. One thing that I am newly trying but which is really helping me on so many levels is CBD oil, which I had an intuition to look into a while back so I spent a lot of time reading into its benefits and potential side-effects (there don’t appear to be any, only huge positives) and where to get it from as finding the right manufacturer with the best processes is key (mine comes from Switzerland but there are dozens of suppliers in the US). I have been using it regularly for 2 weeks now and its been tremendous on so many levels then, additionally, when I have a sudden flare reaction I take some more and it really changes my ability to soften the pain and ride through, quite remarkable. The effects are meant to build up so that your body starts to recalibrate on its own. Interestingly I haven’t had a single headache since I started but if I do, I will be road testing it. Will, no doubt, share a post about it at some point.
LikeLike