Vitamin E and Shingles

Q:  Prevention Magazine published several reports, over a few years, that I know of about using vitamin E for curing shingles.

When I asked my internist about an annoying itch on my wrist, he told me I had shingles and prescribed medications and Tylenol #3 for relieving the discomfort. In the Prevention Magazine, they suggested using vitamin E food supplement orally and also applying the oil on the itchy area. I took one 400 unit food supplement capsule each morning and another in the evening. I applied vitamin E oil on the itchy area twice each day as recommended by Prevention Magazine. The shingles disappeared in 5 days and I didn't even take a Tylenol #3 at any time.

A fellow co-worker of mine had a bad case of shingles that she had been doctoring for weeks with no improvement. I told her about my results, so she also took the vitamin capsules and liquid vitamin E on the itchy painful area. She was cured in a few days and never had them again. If this information is interesting to you, maybe some medical studies of the vitamin E treatment for shingles might be worthwhile.

A:  Thanks for sharing your experience with Vitamin E and shingles. In a computerized search of 300 articles on shingles and 1500 on vitamin E, there was not one mention of Vitamin E for shingles, so no medical research that I know of has been done. It makes me wonder what the sources were for Prevention Magazine's many reports. Although I would not advise people to use it (because there is no scientific evidence), neither would I discourage it, because vitamin E should not do any harm at the dosages you mentioned.

Dr. Rebekah Wang-Cheng is a former Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Her medical advice column, which answers health-related questions from readers, also appeared in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.