If you had the chickenpox vaccine and so did not get infected with chickenpox then the shingles vaccine is not recommended.
Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is a painful skin rash caused by the reactivation of the chickenpox virus (varicella-zoster virus) in people who have previously had chickenpox.
The only difference is with the vaccine you do not suffer the pain of the actual disease, of course, it is easier to make the vaccine/disease choice for other people.
But doesn't the chickenpox vaccine work by causing a very mild infection similar to normal illness? My daughter had rush on her face after the vaccine. She didn't get sick with me and her brother, but doesn't the virus live in her body now? This is a live vaccine, right?
Good question but hard to answer because the adults who are now getting shingles were children before the vaccine was available.
Probably there is a very low risk of getting a mild case of shingles but we will have to wait a while to know better.
Err...no...your body fights the infection by producing T and B lymphocytes that, once the infection is gone will “remember” how to combat the particular virus.
Natural varicella infection is never actually gone, it stays in your body forever. I wonder how different it is from the weakened virus from vaccine, because these live-attenuated vaccines actually contain live (though, very weakened) natural virus in them.
When my daughter had blisters all over her face after vaccine, I had no immunity to this virus yet and I got a similar blister on my right hand, which I used to take care of her (to wash, to brush the hair etc). Though I only heard about old polio vaccine that made vaccinated kids contagious, I don't believe it's a coincidence, because the blister was very typical for chickenpox. That's why I thought that if the virus is so similar to natural, then maybe it stays in your body like natural and can probably cause shingles later as well.
Oh, that's easy. The weakened viruses don't stay in your body forever. They don't even cause an infection. They just say to your immune system "Hey, I'm a chickenpox virus" and then your immune system takes a photo and develops the needed weaponry.
I recommend The Beautiful Cure by Daniel M Davis if you're really interested in how it works.