How Do You Stop A Cold Sore From Spreading?
“Hi, I’m Dr. David Hill, and today we’re going to talk about how to stop a cold sore from spreading. Now, when we talk about cold sores, really we’re talking about a Herpes Simplex virus infection. There are several different strains of the Herpes Simplex virus. We used to say that the one that affected the lips was Herpes type 1, and the part that affected the genitals was Herpes type 2, and that used to be the case. However, for reasons we don’t fully understand, the behavior of the herpes viruses has been changing. We now know that genital herpes may affect the lips, lip herpes may affect the genitals. Therefore, this neat assumption that lip herpes always stays on the lips and genital herpes always stays where it came from is no longer true. Now, cold sores are always unpleasant. They may tingle, they may burn, they may carry a lot of pain with them. They don’t look particularly attractive if they’re in some place that people can see. They tend to weep and crust over and get big an