Identifying cold sore triggers and understanding what causes cold sores can help us to develop preventative strategies against future outbreaks. While much has been written, no one knows exactly what may cause the herpes simple type 1 virus to remain dormant in one person while wreaking havoc on another.
What is known is that there do appear to be cold sore triggers that bring about recurrences and that these recurrences, in large part, are associated with a person’s present condition and/or situation. Having said that, there’s no harm in taking a good look at cold sore triggers associated with cold sore outbreaks and begin preparing preventative strategies against future suffering.
Possible Cold Sore Triggers
Much is speculated regarding how a person’s present physical and/or emotional condition could, at once, become cold sore triggers for a recurring outbreak. What do you think?
Here are some possible cold sore triggers that you may be familiar with if you are a cold sore sufferer:
Having a cold, fever, or the flu (hence, the term “fever blister” often used to describe a cold sore)
Hormonal changes – particularly in women during their period Changes to your immune system
Trauma to the skin such as extreme dryness (i.e. chapped or sunburned lips). If you think back to any time that you’ve had a fever blister or cold sore outbreak, you can probably identify with one or all of these possible cold sore triggers.
At the time of any given outbreak, it is highly unlikely that nothing was going on in your life. You were either stressed to the max, depressed, worried, having your period, sunburned, sick, or whatever. Something was happening and any one or all of the above could have been a trigger.
As hard as it is, the best thing to do at the first sign of the beginning cold sore stages is to remain calm. Freaking out that a cold sore is coming appears to do nothing but make the outbreak worse or, at the very least, make it last longer.
Stress is known to be one of the main cold sore triggers – the reason being that both stress and illness bring down the body’s immune system and this seems to be when the herpes simplex 1 virus attacks.
Really – no matter how you look at it, the experience of a cold sore outbreak really sucks. The trick, of course, is to nip the outbreak “in the bud” (to the best of our ability) immediately after the first warning signs and to work at eliminating the cold sore triggers that may be affecting our recurrence rate in our lives.