Getting a Shingles Wake Up Call with Dr. Anna Cabeca

<p>Dr. Anna tells the story of how she got a big wake up call about her life and health after she got shingles during a recent vacation. Find out why Dr. Anna felt betrayed by her body at first but then came to realize that the shingles were a sign that she needed to slow down and reconnect with what her body needed to thrive and what you need to do to do the same.</p> <ul> <li>[0:55] We often get wake up calls in life that tell us there is something better we need to be doing for our health.</li> <li>[1:55] Dr. Anna recently had an experience with shingles after traveling and working across several states. While shooting a documentary with Dr. Trevor Cates in Park City, Utah. she woke up with a lesion on her back. The next day, the number of lesions increased to four.</li> <li>[4:10] Her first response was to be angry at her body and frustrated that, despite eating healthy foods and living a healthy lifestyle, her body still became infected with an uncomfortable disease. But was she really as healthy as she believed?</li> <li>[4:50] Shingles is a disease caused by the chickenpox virus and often ends up buried and dormant in a particular nerve dermatome. Shingles tend to wrap around and stay limited to one half of your body, and often causes a lot of pain, including long-term neuropathic pain after the disease is gone.</li> <li>[7:05] Roughly 1 in 1000 people will experience shingles in their lifetime and the number of adults over the age of 30 getting it has been increasing since 1998. We have to look at what is compromising the immune system of young adults and causing this increase.</li> <li>[7:50] When we are stressed, our body is producing cortisol which is a natural anti-inflammatory hormone. If there is inflammation in your system and you go on vacation, underlying infections can flare up. This is the likely scenario with Dr. Anna’s shingles infection.</li> <li>[10:05] As soon as she realized that the infection was shingles, she immediately started antiviral therapy and increased the immune boosting supple