First, I must make two corrections to my earlier post. The “undesirable” amino acid is arginine not argnine, like barbitu8 mentioned. And beans are NOT a source of arginine.
JillGat - my information came from a book called “The Feel Better Cookbook” by Susan Skolnick. She has references to studies in her book and I was going to post them last night, but my ISP wasn’t working :mad:
As you can tell from the title, the focus is on modifying your eating habits, not taking supplements.
I don’t have the list here but lysine is readily available from common meats. Frankly, in this meat-happy culture, I wouldn’t be surprised if most Americans get scads of lysine in their everyday diet. If you want more lysine, eat fish, which is first on the list.
I’ve tried taking lysine supplements occasionally, but they don’t seem to do much. The impression I got from the book is that lysine discourages the virus from flaring up. Once you start to feel the tingling, it’s too late for the lysine to help much. If I had a real problem with fever blisters, I might work harder at reducing my nut and chocolate consumption, but I may get a fever blister once a year.
barbitu8 - I can understand your point of view, but I get the same results with ice. It’s a little more effort, but it’s free, and I have seen too many problems with side effects in my family, so I tend to avoid medications(I include herbals in this) when I have a choice. Also, since I get fever blisters so rarely, every tube/bottle/whatever would only be good for one or two outbreaks!
JillGat - I doubt there is any studies on using ice (How would you do a double blind, I wonder) but the theory is that the virus is active at slightly higher temperatures than body temperature, so cooling down the area will reduce or stop viral activity. I would be interested in your friends opinion on this.
Lips are so vascular that ice could not appreciably lower the temperature unless you kept it on so long you got frostbite. However, like an injury, it will suppress inflammation. This is what hydrocortisone does. So, it may be as efficacious as hydrocortisone. However, as good as that is, I’ve found Curasore and acyclovir better.
Ice on the lips is a stressor. This is why being out in extreme cold can trigger a cold sore outbreak. Ice does nothing but numb pain temporarily in this instance.
I must respectfully disagree with JillGat as to what my experience is.
Fever blisters have three stages:
Tingling.
Active Eruption.
Healing.
When I apply ice during stage 1, I will either not get a fever blister or get a very small fever blister (size of a pimple) at least 95 % of the time.
If I don’t apply ice, I will get a fever blister that is usually the size of an English pea or larger.
I admit that some of the times I apply ice a fever blister wouldn’t have developed.
Cold may be a stressor for some people. My triggers are fever or getting severely overheated and dehydrated.
Again, this is only my experience, but my experience is that I am not experiencing pain reduction by applying ice during stage 1, because there is no pain, only tingling. If I apply ice during stage 2, I agree that the only effect of the ice is to reduce pain and swelling.
BTW, I am still not able to log on at home. Here is a web page that discussed the dietary therapy. http://www.herpeszone.com/A&lysine.htm