Cold Sores Symptoms

Cold Sores: Introduction

Cold sores, also known as fever blisters develop on areas of your face including your lips, edges of your mouth and nose.

These are watery blisters caused by an infection due to HSV-1 or herpes simplex virus 1. Symptoms occur to individuals with oral herpes infection (herpes labialis).

What are the Cold Sores Symptoms?

As you become aware about possible cold sores signs and symptoms you can quickly identify, and take the right course of action regarding its treatment.

An outbreak may be followed by mild fever, soreness in your throat, mouth and gums. In some cases, one may not have any symptoms or signs of cold sores.

These are the symptoms for cold sores:

• At the very onset of the infection, you may experience a tingling, burning sensation underneath your skin, especially on your mouth or at the base of your nose. You may feel itchy in these areas as well.
• When you have had cold sores for two or three days, blisters make an appearance on parts of your lips and mouth accompanied by swelling that may involve the surrounding area.
• Following cold sores, your blister will form into ulcers. These ulcers open up and redness develops therein, accompanied by severe pain. You are most contagious at this stage.
• From the fifth day your blisters will begin to dry up and crust (in two to three days) with a deep yellow or brown color. This is cold sore crusting.
• Following crusting, scabs begin to form (on the sores) in ten to fourteen days and these scabs then fall off gradually. The healing process takes about two weeks from the time you experienced the initial cold sores symptoms.

It is generally observed that signs for cold sores infection can vary a lot among affected individuals.

Even after full healing of your cold sores, the HSV-1 virus (that causes cold sores) stays dormant in your nervous system ready to reactivate whenever triggered.

Once you have the herpes virus infection, you are more likely to get cold sores. A practical approach is to take measures to avoid triggering the virus into action. For this you should treat the initial symptoms of cold sores such as tingling to better manage the outbreak.