Lysine for Cold Sores - Will It Work on Your Cold Sore?
Lysine and cold sores? A great remedy if you use it the right way. If you will let me, I would like to share with you the right and wrong way to use lysine for cold sores.
Lysine for cold sores is much talked about these days. The truth is - lab and empirical data strongly support the use of lysine for cold sores.
How does cold sore lysine fix and prevent oral herpes cold sore outbreaks? What is the correct way to use it?
These are very good questions.
However, it is important to know what actually creates the cold sore before using lysine for cold sores.
The primary cause of all cold sore events is the herpes simplex virus. Whether you call them cold sores, fever blisters, or oral herpes outbreaks, they are all the same thing.
An extremely contagious virus, it currently infects about 89% of humans around the world. The majority of these people catch the herpes simplex virus before 12 years of age.
For most of your life, the herpes virus is hiding in the nerve roots. For facial sores, the virus resides behind the ear, in the nerve ganglia. If the virus stays latent, you will never experience a cold sore.
The herpes simplex virus will become active to produce new virus. Since it lives in the nerves, it can quickly tell when your immunity drops. Stress of any sort can create the right conditions for cold sores to happen.
Herpes virus moves to the surface through the set of nerve fibers that it has chosen to occupy. At the surface, each virus particle picks out a nerve cell to enter.
The herpes simplex virus then compels the cell to build new virus. The cell eventually swells and explodes. Then millions of highly contagious virus particles cascade out.
The gaping cold sore ulcer is the result of millions of destroyed cells.
Arginine is a common protein fraction (amino acid). It is the primary protein needed to build new herpes virus. It is found, to some degree, in most foods. Arginine is particularly high in chocolate and nuts.
Your cells will store arginine in a specific spot within the cell membrane.
Lysine is also an essential amino acid. Dairy and fish are good sources of lysine. New herpes virus can not be created using lysine. It is like putting water in your gas tank.
Lysine and arginine share the same storage area in your cells. The more lysine you put in storage, the less room for arginine.
You can easily lower the cell’s arginine supply by raising lysine intake. This is a tactic many people use to stop the progression of a cold sore and prevent future oral herpes outbreaks. You are, in affect, starving out the virus.
Lysine and arginine fight each other. Increase lysine in your diet with vegetables, fish and dairy products. Decrease arginine in your diet by leaving out arginine foods such as chocolate, nuts and grains.
But, modifying your way of eating for the sake of fighting cold sore, fever blister or oral herpes outbreaks is usually not convenient or fun. I prefer lysine supplements. They are easy to find, quite cheap and convenient.
Lysine capsules normally come in 500-milligram size. You can get much more lysine into your system this way than trying to eat more lysine food. And you can easily take extra lysine rather than go without chocolate.
Two to five grams (2000 to 5000 milligrams) is a common dosage during an oral herpes cold sore outbreak. Between sores, folks take 500 to 1000 milligrams per day as prevention maintenance.
But, watch out for the hype.
Lysine for cold sores is a well-proven and effective treatment when taken internally. However, it has not shown much value as a topical treatment.
There are lysine salves on the market for use as cold sore remedies. Lysine must get into the cells to work. Lysine does not absorb through the skin. You must take it orally for good results.
Lysine for cold sores is one of the better cold sore remedies for you, if used as outlined above.
There is much more you should know about lysine for cold sores - and other great cold sore remedies. But, there is just not enough room to cover it all in one article. It would be to your benefit to explore some of my other free articles.
Whether you suffer from frequent outbreaks, or they seem to last forever, lysine is a great treatment choice. But do not quit here. There are other cold sore remedies you will discover that work equally as well as lysine for cold sores.