Cold sores are fluid filled bumps on or around your lips. They are caused by herpes simplex virus 1. They are also called fever blisters. Unfortunately the virus remains dormant inside your body in the nerves even after healing.
You may get the outbreak of cold sores again when your stress levels are very high or your immunity is low.
Vitamin C and many other nutrients are good for cold sore prevention and healing as they increase your immunity. It can be even more powerful than Lysine which is generally recommended by doctors to deal with your blisters.
Table of Contents
- How Good is Vitamin C for Your Cold Sores?
- How to Use Vitamin C for Cold Sores?
- Other Natural Remedies for Cold Sores
- Vitamin C and L-Lysine
- Other Tips and Precautions
How Good is Vitamin C for Your Cold Sores?
Vitamin C also known as ascorbic acid is a powerful nutrient to improve your body's immunity towards viral and other infections.
It also helps in the healing of skin tissues.
And one of the very powerful uses of Vitamin C is to ward off fatigue and stress.
Keeping in mind that stress has been identified as one of the most common figures of cold sore outbreaks, the use of vitamin c makes sense to prevent outbreaks of cold sores too.
Vitamin C not only helps to prevent the outbreak of cold sores by increasing your body's immunity as well as reducing fatigue and stress, but also helps in healing fast by fighting the viruses and repairing skin tissues fast.
Taking other vitamins like vitamin A, E and B6 also help in boosting immunity.
How to Use Vitamin C for Cold Sores?
There are a number of different ways in which you can take higher doses of Vitamin C to heal cold sores.
- The daily recommended dose of Vitamin C is 90 milligrams per day for an average adult above the age of 19.
- A a glass of orange juice can meet your daily requirement.
- Drink 1 glasses of orange juice three times daily for a week to heal your cold sores.
- Maximum safe dose of Vitamin C is 2000 milligrams per day.
- It is believed that your body cannot absorb more than 200 milligrams of Vitamin C daily. The excess amount comes out of your body through urine.
If you do not prefer large quantities of orange juice or Vitamin C through any natural fruit for some reason then you can take Vitamin C supplements. Doctors sometimes Vivek Amin 1000 mg Vitamin C supplement and you will notice that most of it drains out along with your urine. your urine colour is generally dark yellow in that case.
Once your cold sores are healed within a week you should get back to normal consumption of Vitamin C.
Other Natural Remedies for Cold Sores
Following are other natural remedies for cold sores that have been used for a long time. You may also like to try them as they are not harsh chemicals and have no side effects. All these natural products are for topical use on the blisters.
- Aloe vera gel
- Peppermint oil
- Witch Hazel oil
- Vanilla oil or extract
- Echinacea
- Licorice
- Ice
- Lemon balm
- Milk
- Cornstarch
Vitamin C and L-Lysine
L-Lysine is an amino acid that interferes with herpes virus replication. You get L-Lysine supply from all protein rich foods such as meat, fish, cheese, nuts, eggs and legumes. Food quantities of lysine ate not enough to stave off herpes viruses so doctors recommend taking capsules of lysine for cold sores and other herpes infections.
Vitamin C on the other hand increases your body's immunity to fight with viruses and other external infections. So if your body's immunity is high then you will require less quantities of lysine to deal with the herpes simplex type 1 virus.
Vitamin C also fights the virus.
So, a combination of lysine capsules and Vitamin C becomes an obvious combination to heal your cold so fast.
Vitamin C can also be obtained from so many different fruits and vegetables. Although when we think of Vitamin C we think of oranges, but the fact is that there are dozens of other fruits and vegetables which have much higher Vitamin C than oranges.
Following are some of those top Vitamin C rich foods, you can regularly consume to increase your immunity.
- Acerola
- Blackcurrant
- Camu Camu
- Green chilli
- Guava
- Indian gooseberry
- Kakadu plum
- Parsley
- Rosehip
- Seabuckthorn
Add Vitamin c rich foods in your daily diet to prevent future outbreaks of cold sores.
Other Tips and Precautions
- Keep your hands off the cold sores on your lips to avoid passing on the infection
- Avoid close intimate contacts like kissing
- Keep your towels separate to prevent others getting infected
- Eat nutritious and healthy foods to maintain high immunity
- Learn to deal with stress as stress is one of the most common trigger for outbreaks
- Keep distance from the people with cold sore infections.
Contact your doctor if
- Cold sores have not healed within two weeks
- You are getting eye irritation
- You are getting frequent outbreaks of cold sores
- Your symptoms are severe
If you ever get cold sores then understand that the virus will be with you forever. So always keep your immunity levels high by eating well, staying fit and keeping your stress levels low. This will help you to prevent future outbreaks.