Anyone know anything about cold sores?

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Frequently suffer with painful cold sores and am worried about passing them on to babies? I never get the tingly sensation that warns you its coming, just an urge to lick my lip and there it is. Have scars on my lip and just above. They really are bad and don't want babies to suffer. Are they still contagious once they are visible?

P.S found that bursting a vitamin e capsule and rubbing the oil on area soothes and heals them quicker than any other treatment (trust me i have tried everything).

Apparently there is a homeopathic treatment that works quite well... New Era makes it, can't remember what number it is.
Otherwise, you can take a prophyactic (sp?) course of Aciclovir if they're really often.
Seem to remember that you can shed the virus at any stage, but I'm sure someone who knows will come along soon. HTH

If you get them that often and they are painful, you can take daily aciclovir antiviral tablets long term on a maintenance dose which should really help. See your doc. If you get one, use a compeed (sp) patch, you get them from Tescos, chemists etc, tiny transparent patches which you can put on then this greatly lessens the chance of you touching your face and passing the virus on.
The virus is easily killed with soap and water so wash your hands frequently. And no getting too close to your partner, down below, if you get my meaning! It can be passed there as well.
I have also heard good things about a liquorice lipsalve, you could maybe google for it.
The aciclovir creams have been shown to do vitually nothing as it is too late by the time the cold sore appears and the aciclovir needs to be taken internally to be effective. Hope this helps. My DH gets them and I am always paranoid in case he passes it on.

Take Lysine supplement, you can get it from Holland and Barrett. It's an amino acid.

Take 3000mg when you have a cold sore and 1000mg at all other times. There are foods that I avoid as well like cashew nuts, peanuts, popcorn, raisins. Too much alchohol and caffeine tends to boost their growth I've found.

They're a PITA. But you can learn to live with them.

Anything with too much Arginine I avoid as the virus feeds on Arginine. And I eat foods with Lysine and suppliment with it too as Lysine helps to stop the virus replicating.

What's Arginine?

Arginine is another amino acid.

Coldsore sufferers should cut down on foods containing a lot of A (peanuts, popcorn, chocolate, cashew nuts, oatmeal, raisins, sesame and sunflower seeds) and eat more stuff containing a lots of L (cheese, milk, potatoes).

Hope this helps someone else, I have found my coldsores last less long and are less severe following this advice. It's a PITA to change your diet but I'd much prefer to have fewer coldsores and give up peanuts and popcorn etc!

Thanks for all the advice, information. Definately try cutting out the foods mentioned to see if that helps and although I have had aciclovir following an outbreak I have never used it prophylacticly (sp?) so will try that too.
As for compede patches they were awful when I tried them. Made the cold sore ten times worse. I have been left with scar above my lip and area was even more painful than usual with the patch on so will stick to vitamin e.
Will just have to continue to be very careful when around babies.

Lysine is brilliant. I use that and the Compeed patches. The last one I had only lasted 2 days.