Shingles (herpes zoster) is a very painful virus that affects the nerve endings. Typically, a shingles rash will follow the pathline of a particular nerve, in areas like the waist band, face, and shoulder. Researchers estimate that every year, a half a million people in the United States develop shingles.
As if shingles isn’t bad enough, many people, particularly those over 60 years, develop a very painful condition called post herpetic neuralgia, a type of nerve pain along where the shingles occurred.
Nerve pain, neuralgia, is a very difficult pain to treat. While some people see the PHN ease off, some still …read more

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So you’ve tried the ‘usual’ treatments….painkillers, anti-inflammatories and anti-depressants and either they haven’t worked or you didn’t like the side effects?  There are some new treatment options available, and others in development.  Like I said previously, pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to come up with pain remedies because of the potential of scoring with a blockbuster drug that treats a huge market(read:profits!).  This is great news for those of us with pain. Anti-epileptics(also known as anti-convulsants) are being used to treat neuropathic pain and other pain syndromes.    The oldest anti-epileptic agent, Carbamazepine (Tegretol) has proven effective in the management of trigeminal neuralgia, and case reports show …read more