L-Lysine + TENS Unit for Shingles
DLee (USA) on 10/08/2023:
My wife was having pain for about a week before the first blisters showed up and we realized it was shingles. Started L-Lysine right away, 500 mg twice per day, sometimes 3 times. Two patches developed, one about 2 inches long and maybe 1 1/2 inches wide, the other a bit smaller. Blisters were scattered over the affected area; not a mass of blisters like some have had. The infection never spread beyond those areas. Took 5 weeks to heal up. I believe that Lysine limited the development of the infection. Lysine did not seem to help with the nerve 'zaps'. A TENS unit, however, did a remarkable job at nearly eliminating nerve ’zaps’ . We used a 2 channel unit. The nerve pain ran along a line that started just beside the spine and wrapped around in a downward sloping arc around to the front of the chest almost to rhe sternum. The front terminal end of the line was about 2 inches lower than the other end at the spine. TENS unit Electrodes were placed this way: 1st channel- one electrode at the starting point of the pain next to spine with its pair electrode about halfway around the line, on the side (about where your arm would fall). 2nd channel- one electrode halfway between the first pair, the other one at the terminating end of the pain path near the sternum. Used a steady, not pulsating, mode. After 90 minutes of this, no zaps for the next 12 hours, and very few zaps for quite some time after that. Only had to do this twice, about 3 or 4 days after the visible onset of the infection. After that, nerve pain was very intermittent and less intense than it had been.
