“It’s ugly, I dare not come to school.” That’s what my childhood friend, Amy told me. I remember she used to skip class when there was cold sores outbreak on her lips. “I wish I could get rid of these stupid sores!” Yeah, she was really frustrated.

What are the causes of cold sores?

Cold sore is one of the common diseases found on lips. Some call it fever blisters or oral herpes as it’s caused by Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (non-genital) mostly or 2 (genital) occasionally. The blisters are very painful and highly contagious. In other words, cold sore virus transmits through skin contact or body fluids.

By age of 40, almost 90% of adults are infected with Herpes Simplex Virus. It means 9 out 10 people around us have the virus resided in their nerve cells. The only difference is 1/3 of them have never had a outbreak so they don’t even know they carry the virus.

To those who have been living in the nightmares of cold sores, their concern is if cold sore is curable?

In scientific term, to cure a disease means to get rid of the cause of a disease and set a patient free from the sickness for the rest of his or her life. As til to date, there’s no drugs or remedies which is able to kill HSV virus (the cause of cold sore) fully, we would say cold sore is incurable. But, don’t get panic or disappointed.

We can still strive to live with the virus harmoniously.

As Herpes Simplex Viruses are not fatal, as long as we manage to control their outbreaks, we can live with them harmoniously by ensuring the viruses to remain inactive or latent throughout our lives.

Yes, there’re ways to prevent cold sores outbreak. Let us figure out the causes that trigger the outbreak of cold sores beforehand:

• Sunlight
• Stress
• Low immunity
• Fever
• Pregnancy
• High arginine foods

Obviously, it’s not easy to avoid cold sores totally. For example, high arginine foods include chocolate, milk, grape fruits, shellfish, cereals, seeds, peanuts, onions, broccoli and so on. They are  rich in other nutritions which are beneficial to our general health. Thus, we can’t simply use this method to prevent cold sores. 

Instead, we should take foods and supplements as follows to boost our defence against herpes simplex virus activities and thus prevent cold sore outbreak:

• L-Lysine tablets
• B Complex
• Multivitamins
• High lysine foods (beef, chicken, cheese, eggs, yogurts, apricots, mangos etc.)

When there is an outbreak, there’re various recommendations to suppress the outbreak and ease the pain:

• Take antiviral prescription such as Acyclovir, Penciclovir or Famciclovir as soon as the first sign of outbreak is noticed.
• Apply topical ointment such as Abreva and Denavir.
• Ease the pain by taking over the counter cold sore creams or painkillers.
• Apply lip balm to prevent erupted sores from becoming a scab.
• Rub the sores with tea tree oil dipped Q-tip.
• Some even use alcohol or nail polish remover to ease the pain. They’re simply too harsh!
• A patented zinc oxide herpes cream is claimed to be able to stop the outbreak.
• Some say that a prescribed medicine Valtrex is good to suppress the virus. You may ask your doctor about it.
• If you like to try something more natural, honey is recommended. Apply it onto the sores and do not eat it. Besides honey, Healing Natural Oil is another natural approach to prevent and stop cold sores outbreak.
• Never touch the sores as they might break and spread!

Hope the above information will help cold sores sufferers in one way or another to get rid of the outbreak nightmares.

P/S: If you’re looking for a natural cold sores solution which is effective and safe, I highly recommend Grace Melgarejo’s Free Cold Sores In 3 Days . It works. Visit the site for more information.