Everything About Cold Sores – What Can You Do?

Cold sores, or fever blisters which they are called sometimes, are quite uncomfortable, painful and embarrassing. If you have been afflicted in the past with cold sores, you are most likely looking for a reliable cold sore cure. It’s bad enough to have to deal with them once, but the particularly irritating aspect of cold sore affliction is that if you’ve dealt with them once, they are almost certain to recur. You definitely want to find out how to get rid of cold sores if you have them.

One of the worst aspects of cold sores is that, not only are they unattractive, painful, highly contagious, and make simple daily tasks like talking, singing along with hot new music, and eating more difficult – there is also a strong social stigma around having an outbreak of cold sores. This most likely originates from the fact that the virus which causes cold sores is Herpes Simplex Virus Type-1, a different strain of the virus that causes the sexually transmitted disease Herpes. Even though cold sores, in most cases, have nothing to do with sexual contact, the stigma still exists.

All of these irritating characteristics of cold sores – the pain, the social stigma, – make people even more eager to find a cure for cold sores. There are some homespun remedies that can be effective in varying degrees in halting the spread of a cold sore after it has begun. Another benefit of some of these remedies is that they work together with halting the spread of the cold sore and in addition relieve some of the pain, as well. And you don’t need a personal trainer certification to know that you want your body to be as healthy as possible.

Use a Tea Bag – One method is to steep a tea bag in hot water for a few minutes (just as you would when making a cup of tea), and then hold the steeped tea bag against the cold sore as a compress. This should be repeated several times a day.

Using Ice – The tea bag technique uses heat to soothe the cold sore, and the ice method uses the other extreme. Pressing a cold compress with ice inside to the cold sore as soon as it begins to appear can, by many accounts, stop the cold sore from becoming a major outbreak.

Using Dietary Restrictions – To prevent cold sores in the first place, you can refrain from eating some foods in your diet to keep cold sores from appearing initially. You should avoid high acid foods, and also caffeine. Therefore, this would mean stopping your daily coffee. Also, choosing fresh, healthy foods over processed and packaged foods can make a big difference.

These suggestions can definitely help prevent cold sores and make them better once they’ve begun to break out.