Cold Sore Cause, Cold Sore Symptoms and Cold Sore Treatment

Cold Sore Cause

Cold sores are caused a Herpes virus. You pick it up from someone through their infected saliva e.g. sharing a spoon or kissing. Once it reaches your skin it burrows in and sets up a nursery in any nearby nerve protecting its offspring from your immune system. Any that pop out quickly get nabbed by your fighter cells and killed but some stay protected in the nerve.

Things change when you get stressed. Your immune system gets sluggish and the Herpes virus clan take the opportunity to replicate and pop out the nerve and infect the skin above them. This is toxic to skin cells creating blisters.

Cold Sore Symptoms

• Tingling
• Burning
• Itching
• Blisters
• Circular red patch

Often you will get tingling and soreness warning over the affected skin before the sore actually develops. These sores can infect loved ones through kissing.

Cold Sore Treatment

There is no cure for cold sores because it hides dormant in nerves indefinitely. But when it tries to grow into a sore Acyclovir antiviral cream applied over the tingly area can drastically reduce the severity and duration of an outbreak. Acyclovir looks alot like an ingredient Herpes virus uses when making copies of itself. But it's a faulty copy so new issues of the virus made of it don't work.

If you get outbreaks very often your doctor may also put you on Acyclovir type tablets daily to lower your frequency of cold sores.

The key in cold sore treatment is to start Acyclovir cream or tabs (Valtrex) at the first sign of symptoms to limit the frequency, duration and intensity of attacks.

Cold Sore Forum

 

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