Cold Sores: What You Need to Know When You Get Infected with HSV-1 or HSV-2

Cold sores are also known as fever blisters and are those eruptions that appear around the oral and facial area. They come as a result of the HSV-1 (or Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1). The outbreaks Half of the people that get infected with the HSV virus don’t have outbreaks – the virus stays in a dormant and inactive state. Lots of people who were infected with this virus don’t even know they got infected at some point. But all the other people experience the Cold Sore Outbreaks – and they can take months or just weeks, or several times per year. This mainly depends on lots of factors, such as stress, a certain diet, and exposure to different triggers that can get you the virus. The frequency of the outbreaks differs from one person to another. One person can have outbreaks all the time, and others can only have a few times a year. No cure It’s good to keep in mind that there’s no cure at the moment – once you got it, it stays with you for life. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot do something to reduce the symptoms, severity and frequency of the outbreaks. HSV-2 There’s another type of the herpes virus, and that is Herpes Simplex Type 2 – genital herpes – which affects the genital area of your body. It’s transmitted through sexual contact and it is contagious, when you have outbreaks and when you don’t present any symptoms. What many people don’t understand is that you don’t need to have the outbreak to give it to others. The difference between HSV-1 and HSV-2 They mainly differ in the fact that the first one has outbreaks in the area of the face, and the other one on the genital area. But they function similarly. The symptoms are the same, and they get triggered even by the same events. They can be kept under control by some non-prescription and prescription treatments. When you are infected with a cold sore Many people get infected before the age of 20. After being infected, the first signs will come about 1 to 3 weeks from the exposure. Again, not every person who was infected with HSV-1 will have outbreaks, but about 25% of the infected persons will experience cold sores. The symptoms can be from mild to severe and can last about three weeks. It’s possible that after the first outbreak, the virus will go dormant, and it will hide in some nerve tissues from the facial area (in case of HSV-2, they hide in the sacral nerves from the lower back), until they appear again. The virus can remain in its dormant state for months, even years.