Chicken Pox- Can You Get It Again?

[jesscarmel]

Hi

We have an outbreak of chicken pox where i work (and scabies as well). i had chicken pox as a kid. can i get it again? i read that if you have an autoimmune disease you are more suseptable and then you could get shingles? i'm waiting to hear back from my dr but was wondering if anyone knew about this?

thanks

Jess

[Tritty]

My sister got it twice - we always thought it was because she didn't get it bad enough the first time....but now we know she has hashimoto's and Rhuematoid arthritis...So I wonder if there is a link there? I think shingles is a different strand of the chicken pox and if you had chicken pox you could get shingles, but am not positive about that...

[tarnalberry]

Open Original Shared Link is caused by the same virus as chickenpox, and occurs when someone who's had chickenpox (for some reason) has the virus re-activated. (It's thought that it doesn't always actually clear the system when you 'recover' from chickenpox, but goes dormant in nerve cells, particularly along the spine.

It's possible - even for otherwise healthy people - to get chickenpox more than once, though it's pretty rare. I would suspect that, if you're on the gluten free diet, you're autoimmune condition is no longer in an active state, and you don't have the same risk as someone with an active autoimmune condition, so you aren't at significantly greater risk than the average person who's had chickenpox before.

[nikki-uk]

This article seems to re-iterate what Tarnalberry said

Open Original Shared Link

[mommida]

I had chicken pox twice. The first time I was under a year old and the second time I was 23. Both causes were very mild, about 50 pox.

L.

[Generic]

My daughter had chicken pox at age 5 and then got shingles at age 11! Ped had never seen it in a child.

[chrissy]

i had shingles when i was about 4 yrs. old.

[darlindeb25]

It is possible to get chicken pox twice--my family doctor told me that when one of the kids didn't have them very heavy.

As for celiac's being more prone to picking up diseases, not true. I absolutely do not believe that we pick up viruses any quicker than anyone else, if as often. Knock on wood, I rarely ever pick up viruses from others. I have lived here on the island for over 2 yrs now and have not had one virus.

Danna Korn wrote the book, "Living Gluten Free for Dummies". It's an excellent read and in it, she states: Some people think that because celiac disease is an autoimmune disease, someone with celiac disease has a compromised immune system. Not at all! In fact, the opposite is true--the immune system in people with celiac disease is working overtime to fight what it perceives to be bad guys--like gluten. I know what she says it true. My intolerance's cause me tummyaches and the like, my allergies give me fits at times, yet I do not get viruses anymore.

[CarlaB]

I had chicken pox twice. The first time I was under a year old and the second time I was 23. Both causes were very mild, about 50 pox.

L.

I've heard that if you're younger than 18 months, you are not necessarily immune after getting them.

[corinne]

I had a very mild case of chicken pox when I was 9 (less than 20 bumps). My brother came down with chicken pox when he was 22 and I volunteered to look after him for the week since I was immune. So I thought I anyways. I came down with chickenpox 10 days later. I had them everywhere (scalp, inside mouth etc.). So much for being a kind sister.