Q. My body gives me a warning before an attack of shingles: I get pain on the skin in the area where I had full-blown shingles before.
I have found if I take L-lysine as soon as I get that signal, I don’t have to deal with shingles again. I start taking L-lysine three times a day with plenty of purified water and black tea and zip zap, no outbreak! The pain subsides within a few hours.
I now use 500 mgs of L-lysine a day as a preventative, and it has been years since I’ve had an attack of shingles. I hope this helps others.
A. As far as we can tell, there have been no studies of the amino acid L-lysine against shingles. The virus behind shingles, varicella zoster, is in the herpes family, and a number of studies indicate that L-lysine can help reduce herpes virus outbreaks, both cold sores and genital lesions (Alternative Medicine Review, June 2007).
L-lysine does not seem to have serious side effects at the dose you are using, and we see no reason not to try it.
