Merely being in the same room with a shingles patient will not cause the child to catch chickenpox. During a shingles infection the virus is not normally in the lungs and therefore can’t be spread through the air. With some shingles medications you can treat shingles to help get rid of the shingles outbreak.

Many people have received the shingles vaccine to help prevent future outbreaks.  Also, there are some treatments that you can use to help prevent shingles from being contagious, which will help prevent you spreading shingles to another person, at times.  Remember, you might not think you are contagious to other people, but would you want to really give someone else shingles?

People with chickenpox cannot communicate shingles to someone else although they can of course pass the chickenpox on to someone who has never had chickenpox. In cases of chickenpox, the virus can become airborne because it is found in the upper respiratory tract.

Shingles occurs when an unknown trigger causes the virus hiding inside the person’s body to become activated. Unlike chickenpox, shingles can’t be “caught” from someone else.  Shingles treatments can offer some relief from the pain associated with shingles and can help you get over the shingles outbreak faster.

As early as 1909, a German scientist suspected that the viruses causing chickenpox and shingles were one and the same. In the 1920s and 1930s, the case was strengthened. As part of an experiment, children were inoculated with fluid from the lesions of patients with shingles. Within two weeks, about half the children came down with chickenpox.

Finally, in 1958, detailed analysis of the viruses taken from patients with either chickenpox or shingles confirmed that the viruses were identical. The virus that causes shingles and chickenpox is known as the varicella-zoster virus.

Based on these studies, it was shown that a person with shingles (also known as herpes zoster) can pass the varicella-zoster virus to others, but these individuals would develop chickenpox instead of shingles. Therefore, a person with shingles cannot transmit shingles to another person. In other words, in order for a person to develop shingles, he or she must already harbor the chickenpox virus in the nervous system. When this virus becomes active again, the individual will develop shingles.

So, to sum it up, shingles are contagious to people that have not had chickenpox. They are not contagious without contact to the individual. The most at risk are children. Shingles are contagious under certain circumstances to everyone.  Shingles vaccine can help you prevent future outbreaks of the shingles disease and shingles treatments can help relieve the shingles pain.

There are many shingles treatments if you do get shingles, however if you aren’t sure if you have shingles, the best method is to stay away from other people during a potential outbreak.  Some of the treatments that you can receive are recommended by your Doctor, however you can also find topical skin creams that will help sooth the pain and itching, calming teas and other foods that can sometimes help with the pain through holistic approaches and other natural remedies that might help.  As each individual is different, so is what might possibly help you deal with an outbreak and the pain and itching that is often associated with it.