I love my local YMCA for many reasons beyond my daily swim. Top of the list: the friendships and conversations in the locker room that are frequent sources of valuable information, connections and motivation. For example, I recently overheard a discussion about Y members and friends of members who had experienced devastating attacks of shingles, including one woman who nearly lost an eye and another who was left with unrelenting nerve pain.
Why You Should Get the New Shingles Vaccine
Why You Should Get the New Shingles Vaccine
That was the push I needed to end my procrastination about getting the new shingles vaccine, Shingrix, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last October after studies involving 16,600 people showed it to be far more effective at preventing this disease than the first shingles vaccine, Zostavax, which I had had a decade earlier. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people 50 and older, including those previously immunized with Zostavax, should now get the Shingrix vaccine.
The process was surprisingly simple and less costly than I had anticipated(list price is $280 for the two-part shot without insurance). All I needed was a prescription from my doctor. I took it to my local pharmacy, where a staff pharmacist administered the vaccine. I’ll get the second part the same way in May. My Medicare Part D insurance covered it with a $40 co-pay for each part. (The cost may be higher if the vaccine is administered in a doctor’s office, so check first.)
Many millions of Americans, especially those older than 40, are susceptible to an eventual attack of shingles, caused by the very same virus that causes chickenpox. Once this virus, varicella zoster, infects a person, it lies dormant for decades in nerve roots, ready to pounce when the immune system is weakened, say, by stress, medication, trauma or disease. One-third of Americans eventually get shingles, but the risk rises with age, and by age 85 half of adults will have had at least one outbreak of shingles.
Before the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine in 1995 in the United States, some four million cases of chickenpox, mostly in children, occurred annually. While you may not remember whether you had chickenpox as a child, chances are you did if you were never vaccinated against it. Why You Should Get the New Shingles Vaccine.
