Why do i get so many cold sores?!


Question: Why do i get so many cold sores.?
I get them like every month or every other month and i get them at the sides of my mouth. They're very painful but not that hard to get rid of. They are very annoying though and it hurts to open my mouth. Help.?.?-No one in my family ever gets them. Im 14 and i have kissed a girl. Was it transmitted.?Health Question & Answer


Answers:
Your family history has nothing to do with Cold Sores. It's a virus, so is like catching a cold... some people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately, unlike a cold, probably 90% of people infected with Cold Sores will continue having them for the rest of their life, even if only 1 time a year. Some people, amazingly, are totally immune to the virus, so will not exhibit the signs I give below... but I think they can still be carriers and transmitters of the virus.

If your sores you are experiencing are, as you say, "not that hard to get rid of" then I question if they are even cold sores.
Cold sores are just like a blister: a bubble of skin that will rupture (crack open) and leak clear liquid.
Cold sores start out as a tingling on or around the lip, kind of like small needle pricking your skin, or like how a sunburn feels. Then, a few hours later the skin starts to swell into a bump, like how a pimple bump looks (wihtout a whitehead). Then after a day or two the skin of the bump becomes a little transparent (you can see a little through it) like a pink balloon. Then, a short while later, perhaps at day 3 or 4, the skin of the bubble ruptures and you will start to leak clear fluid, just like a blister does.
So, it takes about 4 days for a cold to go from its beginning until it becomes a scab of drying up skin.
When it is drying up is when it "hurts" the most. It take about another 3 or so days before the scab finally falls off entirely.
So, in all, it takes about 7 days to go from start of a cold sore to where you again have a smooth patch of skin, but it may still be a bit red as it continues to heal.

So, I'm wondering if perhaps you actually have pimples forming around the outter edge of your lips.? They are particularly painful forms of pimples because you have so many nerves around the lips. Sometimes these pimples will not actually form white-heads and cannot be "popped" via squeezing. At 14, this sounds quite likely because your hormones are chaning a lot right now and pimples often accompany these hormonal changes. And, unlike Cold Sores, pimples can be painful and present one morning but then the swelling thus the associated pain can perhaps go away in a few hours or days and you never develop the tell-tale whitehead of a pimple. In these cases you DO NOT DEVELOP SCABBING. Cold Sores, however, end with scabbing and they leak clear liquid, even if small amounts.

Alternately, perhaps you simply are having very dry lips which is almost always exhibited in the corner of the lips as cracked skin that scabs a little, but doesn't leak clear liquid. Teenagers and children often get this because they #1 do not drink enough water and #2 because they often lick their lips, which removes your body oils from the skin surface and cause your lips to dry out.

SO, whether you have actual cold sores or not:
#1. Drink more water each day (you probably only need about 1 or 2 more glasses a day) to stay hydrated
#2. Use chapstick sometime - don't do it a LOT or you will develop pimples. Chapstick helps replace the oils your lips are not producing enough of or that you are licking off with your tongue, and that oil/chapstick helps build a barrier to help your body hold in its moisure.
#3. Try not to lick your lips all the time.
#4. Most IMPORTANTLY, try NOT to touch your lips or touch things to your mouth that you don't need to (such as someone who would suck on the zipper of his coat often or play with a necklace in his mouth).. THIS is HOW you catch cold sores. And also how you often catch colds and other illnesses. Doctors also suggest you don't even touch your face at all if you do not need to because, again, this is how you easily transmit colds and illnesses to yourself.

Cold Sores (also called Fever Blisters) are actually a particular form of Herpes. This is transmitted in numerous ways via contact -- like from kissing, from drinking from an infected persons' straw, eating off their fork, and so on. It is a very common infection.

Unfortunately there is no cure for Herpes.

There are some drugs that can help, however.
Probably the most recognized is one that a doctor must perscribe, ACYCLOVIR. It has been found recently that the ORAL pill is the most effective method and is usually taken as 5 pills daily. You take it as soon as you feel any sign of a cold sore, which is often felt as a tingling on your lip, and keep taking the pill. It may not stop you from getting a cold sore, but will help minimize the size and number of the resulting sore(s).
People who get many recurrant cold sores actually take this medication daily just to surpess the virus in their system.

Recent research shows that the topical (a cream) ACYCLOVIR (name brand Zovirax) is not very effective. As someone that sometimes gets cold sores, I disagree wholeheartedly. Perhaps the topical cream does not fight the actual virus infection but it does speed up the sloughHealth Question & Answer

you can get cold sores from multiple things.

kissing people who are sick, kissing people who have cold sores, stress, or being sick.

those are all the ways ive gotton them, haha.

theres this stuff called abriva i believe, its a like 20 or so bucks, and its in a small tuby thing, but it works really well for me.Health Question & Answer

If you take L-Lysine every day you won't get them at allHealth Question & Answer



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