What Are Cold Sores?
Cold sores are a type of herpes virus. There are two types of herpes, herpes simplex virus 1 and 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2) both which cause extremely painful infections in the human body. These viruses hide in the nervous system, and therefore are very durable and hard to get rid of. When we talk about cold sores, we usually are talking about HSV-1, but we can also get HSV-2 from cold sores, but that is fairly uncommon.
These cold sores produce so called fever blisters that usually comes up around the mouth and the nose or nostrils. They may occur other places on the body, but those are rare. These blisters break open, releases fluid and then it dissapears after a few days. Symptoms include fever, sore throat, swollen lymph glands and drooling from small children. You will notice that the area which will have an outbreak starts to itch a little before it breaks.
Its important to notice that the illness is most contagious when the outbreak is occuring, and one should avoid contact with others to reduce chance of infecting others. The virus transfers via saliva, secretions from the genitals or from the skin where the virus is situated.
The thing with cold sores are that they do not go away entirely. The virus stays in your nervous system and may break out again at anytime. Most people get the another outbreak upto 12 times throughout a year. There are many factors that could be the cause that triggers the cold sores, this includes:
- Emotional upset and stress
- Sunlight
- Fatigue
- Illnesses
- Menstruation or pregnancy
People with weak immune systems are more prone to become infected and have an outbreak than other with strong immune systems. Cold sores can even be lethal to people with severely reduced immune system.
On the internet there seem to be floating a lot of ideas on how to cure or prevent cold sores. I have been bothered with this for over 4 years and I have become sick and tired of it. What I found out about a year ago is that its fairly easy to get rid of these cold sores is fairly easy and it wasnt all that hard to accomplish. I now have gone 8 months without a blister and I love it. This treatment may not work for everyone, but it certainly is worth a go.
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