Hello and welcome back to Ask a Nutritionist, our weekly mini episode of Dishing Up Nutrition.

I'm Amy Kramm, a registered dietitian with nutritional weight and wellness.

And today, we're diving into a topic

that many people don't think about until it happens to them. Shingles. If you've ever had something

like a shingles outbreak or you're worried about it coming back, you know how much it can rattle

your confidence in your day-to-day life. Maybe your doctor treated the rash and pain, but you're left wondering,

okay, what can I do with my food, my sleep, my daily habits to support my body so this

doesn't keep happening?

That's exactly what we're going to talk about today.

The everyday choices that keep your immune system strong and resilient.

So think of today's episode as your simple, doable plan to support your immune system, so it's

less likely to get overwhelmed. Let's just briefly cover the basics. What is the shingles virus,

and how does it develop? Shinkles is a painful rash that develops from the same virus that causes chicken pox.

If you've had chicken pox at any point in your life, the virus never fully leaves your body.

Instead, it goes dormant in your body.

For many people, it stays asleep forever.

But in some individuals, it can reactivate years or even decades later as shingles, so you don't

catch shingles from someone else in the typical sense?

You only develop shingles if you've previously had chicken pots.

Shingles happens when the virus reactivates.

But unlike chicken packs, shingles usually appears as a painful, blistering rash

that shows up on one side of the body or face. And this isn't something that goes away easily.

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