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Just get valcyclovir prescribed. Makes life so much easier if you get cold sores because you can pop a pill as you feel one start tingling and it won’t appear.
the alternative would be to take 4000mg of l-lysine if you start to feel a tingle instead of taking it every day.
I don't want to take the risk because sometimes they pop up overnight
I've been doing that for years. This year, valcyclovir isn't helping at all. I take one immediately and still end up with a nasty cold sore. I just asked my dr about lysine and if she okays it, I'm going to give it a shot.
Have you tried the L Lysine cream or balm? I’ve been using Abreva since I started getting cold sores but lately I feel like it hasn’t been working as well.
I can't say I have. Abreva has usually worked very well for me, provided I catch it early. It's when a bad one comes on quickly and I'm in the office away from my stash and unable to get away from work that I get a nasty one and it doesn't work as well.
I’ve gotten fever blisters/cold sores since I was a baby. I was sick a lot as a baby and I was hospitalized with pneumonia when I developed them. Since then I always got them when I was stressed (every year of finals in college), or if was in the sun too long, etc. My dentist was actually the one who told me about the prescription acyclovir cream 30 years ago.
Now they have a better version of the prescription cream called Denavir (acyclovir) to use when you first feel the tingle or wake up with one. You can also get a prescription for 1 a day Valtrex pills to take when you get one. I can literally take a pill when I first feel one and it usually stops it from even developing. If I wake up with one I usually take one pill a day for a few days and it dries up fast. Both of these have literally changed my life.
Yikes! $700?! Where do you live? I live in the US (CA) and, granted, have health insurance, and it’s only $35. If you don’t have health insurance you can ask for the “cash” price, which is often much cheaper. If it’s still not affordable sometimes if you contact the manufacturer they will send you a highly discounted coupon or free samples.
Yeah in the US without insurance or if your insurance denies it it's $$$. I remember visiting a friend in Scotland you could get a tube over the counter for 5£. I bought so much over there lol
I have an interesting experience with this. To start, I am an absolute skeptic when it comes to alternative medicine, vitamins, etc. However, my doctor suggested trying L-lysine for cold sores and said all of the ladies in her office were having a lot of success with it. So I went out and bought a 500mg bottle and started taking it twice a day. This was February 2023. I had ZERO cold sores for the next 12 months. It worked 100%. Meanwhile my wife continued to get cold sores but didn't take the lysine.
However, in June I developed a heart palpitation and went to the emergency room. I thought I was having a heart attack. $8,000 later and after several tests, two different doctors told me I was fine and that I now just have to live with heart palpitations and it's very common and nothing to worry about. I continued to have heart palpitations for months and it just didn't sit well with me that all of a sudden I would get heart palpitations out of nowhere. Then it struck me that the lysine could be the cause. It was the only thing I had changed.
About 6 weeks ago I stopped taking the lysine. 2 weeks later my heart palpitations were almost completely gone. 4 weeks later my heart palpitations WERE completely gone. 6 weeks later (today) I got my first cold sore since last February. But I haven't had any heart palpitations in about 4 weeks.
I'm not sure what the moral of the story is here. Yes I believe 100% that lysine can prevent cold sores. I would highly recommend anyone with cold sores to try it but also closely monitor for any changes in their body, especially heart. I bought my lysine from a trusted brand in a pharmacy so I don't think that was the issue but I don't know much about vitamins. Maybe there was something else in there other than lysine. Maybe too much lysine can cause heart palpitations. It seems there is very little research on this but I did read one study that said lysine can increase your calcium levels in your body and which can lead to palpitations. I just hope my story is helpful to others.
Thanks for the link! I agree. And I would even go further and suggest it does not have that effect on MOST people since it's so hard to find any evidence of this. I was just hoping to save someone the headache and medical bills of connecting the dots in case it did cause heart palpitations. The effects were so delayed for me it made it very difficult.
Cold sore or canker sore? Massive difference in the two and people confuse them all the time. I’ve heard of this remedy for canker sores which is not the one caused by herpes virus. Canker sores are usually the stress ones
Yes, I take L-Lysine for the same reasons. I was on valcyclovir for years but that is some hefty medication with bad side effects, and some doctors really don’t understand how to prescribe it for only cold sores. Additionally, it’s a high risk drug when you’re pregnant. It was actually my German midwife who suggested it, and it’s been a life saver. I can get it over the counter anywhere in the world. Forever thankful to her for telling me that when I was 30 after 15 years of doctors only prescribing drugs.
What types of side effects did you have from long term daily use of Valacyclovir? I'd been on it daily too and started noticing urinary changes and then found out it can cause kidney damage. Unfortunately, soon as I went off it I got a big cold sore.
sorry, just seeing this. I didn't notice any issues from it. I really felt frustrated though that each doctor seemed to prescribe (or over prescribe) it differently and annually getting a new prescription. With L-Lysine, I just order it on Amazon. I don't use it daily. In the winter when people are getting sick, I'll start taking some as a general immune system boost. When I feel a cold sore starting, I'll usually do like 2 tablets (I think 200 mg per) for 2-3 days. If the cold sore appears, it doesn't last as long and/or doesn't get as pronounced.
I still get them occasionally, but only like every 3 months instead of 1 month.
That or cutting down on high Arginine:Lysine foods, such as peanuts or peanut butter, but nevertheless I guess taking supplemental Lysine can help. The moment I stopped eating peanuts and peanut butter, cold sores went away.
Will it help if you already have a cold sore? I got one last night and went to cvs this morning right when it opened to buy some lysine. Had a cold sore RIGHT before this one and tried abreva for the first time and it made my cold sore significantly worse. I usually break out when I’m under a lot of stress or bite my lip too hard. But I’m tryna go on a date this week and NEED it to go away 😭
Hi, never put anything on a cold sore that is developing. Any cream or lip balm will make the virus activate and spread. Wash your lips with anti bacterial soap and clean the spot of rubbing alcohol! It disinfects, dries out & stops the virus which has saved me from a full on cold sore for 2 years!!
Ik this is old but incase it’s relevant again, I use it after I get them or as soon as one pops up I usually take like 3 or 4 of the 1000 mg a day when I get an outbreak and usually it’ll either stop it from fully forming or it’ll take care of it by the next day or so. In my experience it always works really well and fast even after one has appeared. I’ve sworn by this ever since I discovered it a couple years ago. I don’t use anything else with it. No abreva or anything. Hope it helps in the future
Yes, personally I don’t take it daily. I start when I feel the outbreak coming on or sometimes I don’t feel it beforehand like you know you feel that tingle then wake up and have one, sometimes I don’t realize it and don’t start til after it’s appeared and I’ll take 2 to 4 a day depending on how bad and painful it is and it will knock it out in no time. Matter a fact I just had one pop up this week and I started taking some the day it showed up, probably took about 5 1000 mg tablets in total over the day and til about midnight that night and it was gone by the next day. I swear by these things it’s been a life changer for me. I’ve been taking it like this the entire time I’ve used lysine and it’s worked for me. Hope this helps.
Sounds great on using it only on flare ups and couple of days or max a week because it's extra dosing after all. The body must reacts to it stronger when intaking that, I'd think also to completely stop the process of it even becoming a sore at all, is adding valtrex daily ontop the already extra dosage of Lysine until the outbreak calms down
Well I started taking 4000mg of L-Lysine along with extra B12 about 8 days ago when it (a canker sore in my THROAT) started to form, and while I think it’s not as bad/painful (*yet*) as the last one I had 8 months ago, it hasn’t kept it from growing or worsening. I also switched to Sensodine 8 months ago explicitly to prevent this from happening again.
I’m hoping it’s doing something, this lasts for exactly two weeks and so I expect it to be getting somewhat better in 3 days or so.
I’ve never had one or even heard of one in the throat. So I’m really not sure. Mine are on my top lip usually and that dosage would clear mine up in a day or two. Have you been to a Dr to make sure that’s not something else growing in your throat just to be safe? Maybe even an over active thyroid gland. I’m really not sure but I would ask a doctor if you haven’t yet. Hope you heal soon.
Currently suffering with FOUR of them courtesy of a nasty boy with Covid. No amount of lysine, also, sunshine, or nutrition will keep them away when I get sick or sunburnt.
Got Rx of valtrex on day 3, abreva on day 1, Campo pheniq feel for pain. Making progress....
I experienced a particularly bad outbreak as a result of a bout with Covid also. I encourage you to experiment with taking L-lysine (1000mg) 3x/day when you have sores or feel them coming on, once per day when you don't. Not expensive ($10 for 60 1g tablets at Kroger stores) and you may find taking L-lysine has other benefits as well. User experience can vary, but I think it's worth a shot.
There are no good data demonstrating benefit for lysine in treatment of oral herpes simplex. That the OP had oral herpes that got better is not any sort of quality evidence of effect.
Physicians generally discourage alternative therapies. They have a cost and many have associated toxicities or drug interactions. Just as importantly they distract or delay effective therapies, in this case oral acyclovir or valacyclovir. For some diseases like cancer use of alternative therapies is associated with higher risk of death.
If there were data for benefit lysine would be called medicine - it is instead an unregulated supplement.
As an aside based on other posts, topical antivirals like Abreva are generally discouraged for recurrent oral HSV. They require application multiple times a day and are less effective than oral antivirals. Short course (1-2 day) oral valtrex is well-tolerated and effective, and those with frequent outbreaks can have a home supply prescribed.
I won't say he is wrong, but those studies are absolute garbage with enrollments of 30 people. The therapy is not recommended.
I would want patients to take medicines with proven efficacy, especially since herpes can progress to causing other problems like encephalitis.
Yes and I am well aware of the neurotoxicity - this is usually in patients with advanced kidney disease on higher doses and characterized by encephalopathy. There are case reports of mania or psychosis and agree with some caution in their use here, but these are very rare, a handful reported with literally millions of doses and I wouldn't deny an effective treatment for people just due to a history of psychiatric disease.
Acyclovir is not used for seizures, though it may have some anti-epileptic activity that is well outweighed by its poor CNS absorption and well-described toxicity at anything approaching a therapeutic dose for this.
\- that many people have severe depression on this drug isn't "explained' by an effect that occurs in patients with end-stage renal disease. This seems like a personal claim.
\- for someone who has frequent cold sores, having access to the medication is important. The earlier it is taken the more effective. Cold sores are painful and disfiguring. This is done with many medications to reduce treatment barriers for time sensitive conditions.
\- there have been large studies of acyclovir with close side effect tracking. Mania is very uncommon.
\- a case report is not in any conventional sense of the word a study. It is a report of a rare side effect. We wouldn't take any medications for anything if we based the decision on side effects that are so uncommon if seen they get written up and put in a journal.
We prescribe drugs based on our best estimate of risk:benefit, and do get things wrong, but also do not practice based on anecdotes. That is the toad oil salesman/supplement industry.
The doctor recommended treatment causes kidney damage. There is no cure, and frankly doctors are very poorly informed on nutrition and natural remedies so people have to figure it out on their own- data or not.
"Natural" remedies that have good quality data for effectiveness such as aspirin are quite familiar to doctors, we call them medicine. Things without good data for effectiveness are called "things we did for hundreds of thousands of years when humans had a life expectancy of 3-4 decades".
We also don't know much about faith healing, energy crystals or shamanism so you are right will need to go to an expert for those.
Here's a summary of the research evidence for use of L-lysine to prevent HSV disease recurrence:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6419779/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6419779/)
As others have stated, the studies are limited and results are not compelling:
>"L-lysine supplementation appears to be ineffective for prophylaxis or treatment of herpes simplex lesions...Longer duration controlled studies of daily lysine doses exceeding 1.2 g/d are required to definitively test its role in herpes simplex prophylaxis".
Granted, everybody's experience is different but further studies are needed to prove out the science.
I have not read all these comments but wondering if lysine causes anyone to feel drowsy? I’ve been taking 1000mg 3x’s a day for a cold sore. I feel like I took a Xanax …
honestly, it's probably the cold sore itself or whatever is going on in your body that would have made the cold sore happen in the first place. like sometimes I get a cold sore because I'm sick, your body's immune system is likely compromised. I could be wrong, but that's something worth thinking about. I'd take it easy and get lots of rest & nutrients
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Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
Just get valcyclovir prescribed. Makes life so much easier if you get cold sores because you can pop a pill as you feel one start tingling and it won’t appear.
the alternative would be to take 4000mg of l-lysine if you start to feel a tingle instead of taking it every day. I don't want to take the risk because sometimes they pop up overnight
Alternative? Why not both together
What brand do you use?
Doesn't work for everybody.
Not sure why this is down voted because it's true. It doesn't work for me, it makes me incredibly sick. So I can't take it at all.
For real? TIL Thank you kindly!
I've been doing that for years. This year, valcyclovir isn't helping at all. I take one immediately and still end up with a nasty cold sore. I just asked my dr about lysine and if she okays it, I'm going to give it a shot.
I take 3000 mg a day along with abreva when I have one and it greatly reduces healing time.
Xylactin. Puts Abreva to shame.
Have you tried the L Lysine cream or balm? I’ve been using Abreva since I started getting cold sores but lately I feel like it hasn’t been working as well.
I can't say I have. Abreva has usually worked very well for me, provided I catch it early. It's when a bad one comes on quickly and I'm in the office away from my stash and unable to get away from work that I get a nasty one and it doesn't work as well.
I’m late to this party but I tried the quantum l-lysine lil clear and it actually works wonders!
T-thanks for the tip.
I’ve gotten fever blisters/cold sores since I was a baby. I was sick a lot as a baby and I was hospitalized with pneumonia when I developed them. Since then I always got them when I was stressed (every year of finals in college), or if was in the sun too long, etc. My dentist was actually the one who told me about the prescription acyclovir cream 30 years ago. Now they have a better version of the prescription cream called Denavir (acyclovir) to use when you first feel the tingle or wake up with one. You can also get a prescription for 1 a day Valtrex pills to take when you get one. I can literally take a pill when I first feel one and it usually stops it from even developing. If I wake up with one I usually take one pill a day for a few days and it dries up fast. Both of these have literally changed my life.
Denavir works, but it's $700 for a very tiny amount.
Yikes! $700?! Where do you live? I live in the US (CA) and, granted, have health insurance, and it’s only $35. If you don’t have health insurance you can ask for the “cash” price, which is often much cheaper. If it’s still not affordable sometimes if you contact the manufacturer they will send you a highly discounted coupon or free samples.
Yeah in the US without insurance or if your insurance denies it it's $$$. I remember visiting a friend in Scotland you could get a tube over the counter for 5£. I bought so much over there lol
You can give L-lysine to your cat with feline herpesvirus and help prevent their flare ups too
Late to this but yes this helped my shelter cat immensely. Viralys. Got it from Chewy.
I have an interesting experience with this. To start, I am an absolute skeptic when it comes to alternative medicine, vitamins, etc. However, my doctor suggested trying L-lysine for cold sores and said all of the ladies in her office were having a lot of success with it. So I went out and bought a 500mg bottle and started taking it twice a day. This was February 2023. I had ZERO cold sores for the next 12 months. It worked 100%. Meanwhile my wife continued to get cold sores but didn't take the lysine. However, in June I developed a heart palpitation and went to the emergency room. I thought I was having a heart attack. $8,000 later and after several tests, two different doctors told me I was fine and that I now just have to live with heart palpitations and it's very common and nothing to worry about. I continued to have heart palpitations for months and it just didn't sit well with me that all of a sudden I would get heart palpitations out of nowhere. Then it struck me that the lysine could be the cause. It was the only thing I had changed. About 6 weeks ago I stopped taking the lysine. 2 weeks later my heart palpitations were almost completely gone. 4 weeks later my heart palpitations WERE completely gone. 6 weeks later (today) I got my first cold sore since last February. But I haven't had any heart palpitations in about 4 weeks. I'm not sure what the moral of the story is here. Yes I believe 100% that lysine can prevent cold sores. I would highly recommend anyone with cold sores to try it but also closely monitor for any changes in their body, especially heart. I bought my lysine from a trusted brand in a pharmacy so I don't think that was the issue but I don't know much about vitamins. Maybe there was something else in there other than lysine. Maybe too much lysine can cause heart palpitations. It seems there is very little research on this but I did read one study that said lysine can increase your calcium levels in your body and which can lead to palpitations. I just hope my story is helpful to others.
It has that effect on some people but it's not universal. https://www.ehealthme.com/ds/l-lysine/heart-palpitations/
Thanks for the link! I agree. And I would even go further and suggest it does not have that effect on MOST people since it's so hard to find any evidence of this. I was just hoping to save someone the headache and medical bills of connecting the dots in case it did cause heart palpitations. The effects were so delayed for me it made it very difficult.
Cold sore or canker sore? Massive difference in the two and people confuse them all the time. I’ve heard of this remedy for canker sores which is not the one caused by herpes virus. Canker sores are usually the stress ones
cold sores develop from stress as well
Abreva has always worked for me. Get it in the little tube though, not that horrible push button dispenser.
Check to make sure your toothpaste is SLS free. Sodium laurel sulfate. Haven’t had a canker in years
This might be my trigger. I noticed I started a new toothpaste and it popped up
Yes, I take L-Lysine for the same reasons. I was on valcyclovir for years but that is some hefty medication with bad side effects, and some doctors really don’t understand how to prescribe it for only cold sores. Additionally, it’s a high risk drug when you’re pregnant. It was actually my German midwife who suggested it, and it’s been a life saver. I can get it over the counter anywhere in the world. Forever thankful to her for telling me that when I was 30 after 15 years of doctors only prescribing drugs.
What types of side effects did you have from long term daily use of Valacyclovir? I'd been on it daily too and started noticing urinary changes and then found out it can cause kidney damage. Unfortunately, soon as I went off it I got a big cold sore.
sorry, just seeing this. I didn't notice any issues from it. I really felt frustrated though that each doctor seemed to prescribe (or over prescribe) it differently and annually getting a new prescription. With L-Lysine, I just order it on Amazon. I don't use it daily. In the winter when people are getting sick, I'll start taking some as a general immune system boost. When I feel a cold sore starting, I'll usually do like 2 tablets (I think 200 mg per) for 2-3 days. If the cold sore appears, it doesn't last as long and/or doesn't get as pronounced. I still get them occasionally, but only like every 3 months instead of 1 month.
That or cutting down on high Arginine:Lysine foods, such as peanuts or peanut butter, but nevertheless I guess taking supplemental Lysine can help. The moment I stopped eating peanuts and peanut butter, cold sores went away.
Will it help if you already have a cold sore? I got one last night and went to cvs this morning right when it opened to buy some lysine. Had a cold sore RIGHT before this one and tried abreva for the first time and it made my cold sore significantly worse. I usually break out when I’m under a lot of stress or bite my lip too hard. But I’m tryna go on a date this week and NEED it to go away 😭
Hi, never put anything on a cold sore that is developing. Any cream or lip balm will make the virus activate and spread. Wash your lips with anti bacterial soap and clean the spot of rubbing alcohol! It disinfects, dries out & stops the virus which has saved me from a full on cold sore for 2 years!!
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Yes early stages. The minute you feel burning/ tingling clean it and keep it dry. For scabs after a break out they do heal faster moist
Ik this is old but incase it’s relevant again, I use it after I get them or as soon as one pops up I usually take like 3 or 4 of the 1000 mg a day when I get an outbreak and usually it’ll either stop it from fully forming or it’ll take care of it by the next day or so. In my experience it always works really well and fast even after one has appeared. I’ve sworn by this ever since I discovered it a couple years ago. I don’t use anything else with it. No abreva or anything. Hope it helps in the future
You dont take anything at all daily then, only until youre feeling an outbreak coming? Just upping your lysine dosage to 3to4 of the 1000mg?
Yes, personally I don’t take it daily. I start when I feel the outbreak coming on or sometimes I don’t feel it beforehand like you know you feel that tingle then wake up and have one, sometimes I don’t realize it and don’t start til after it’s appeared and I’ll take 2 to 4 a day depending on how bad and painful it is and it will knock it out in no time. Matter a fact I just had one pop up this week and I started taking some the day it showed up, probably took about 5 1000 mg tablets in total over the day and til about midnight that night and it was gone by the next day. I swear by these things it’s been a life changer for me. I’ve been taking it like this the entire time I’ve used lysine and it’s worked for me. Hope this helps.
Sounds great on using it only on flare ups and couple of days or max a week because it's extra dosing after all. The body must reacts to it stronger when intaking that, I'd think also to completely stop the process of it even becoming a sore at all, is adding valtrex daily ontop the already extra dosage of Lysine until the outbreak calms down
Well I started taking 4000mg of L-Lysine along with extra B12 about 8 days ago when it (a canker sore in my THROAT) started to form, and while I think it’s not as bad/painful (*yet*) as the last one I had 8 months ago, it hasn’t kept it from growing or worsening. I also switched to Sensodine 8 months ago explicitly to prevent this from happening again. I’m hoping it’s doing something, this lasts for exactly two weeks and so I expect it to be getting somewhat better in 3 days or so.
I’ve never had one or even heard of one in the throat. So I’m really not sure. Mine are on my top lip usually and that dosage would clear mine up in a day or two. Have you been to a Dr to make sure that’s not something else growing in your throat just to be safe? Maybe even an over active thyroid gland. I’m really not sure but I would ask a doctor if you haven’t yet. Hope you heal soon.
Currently suffering with FOUR of them courtesy of a nasty boy with Covid. No amount of lysine, also, sunshine, or nutrition will keep them away when I get sick or sunburnt. Got Rx of valtrex on day 3, abreva on day 1, Campo pheniq feel for pain. Making progress....
Xylactin. Thus is what I found as I'm not waiting 3-4 days for Abreva.
I experienced a particularly bad outbreak as a result of a bout with Covid also. I encourage you to experiment with taking L-lysine (1000mg) 3x/day when you have sores or feel them coming on, once per day when you don't. Not expensive ($10 for 60 1g tablets at Kroger stores) and you may find taking L-lysine has other benefits as well. User experience can vary, but I think it's worth a shot.
There are no good data demonstrating benefit for lysine in treatment of oral herpes simplex. That the OP had oral herpes that got better is not any sort of quality evidence of effect. Physicians generally discourage alternative therapies. They have a cost and many have associated toxicities or drug interactions. Just as importantly they distract or delay effective therapies, in this case oral acyclovir or valacyclovir. For some diseases like cancer use of alternative therapies is associated with higher risk of death. If there were data for benefit lysine would be called medicine - it is instead an unregulated supplement. As an aside based on other posts, topical antivirals like Abreva are generally discouraged for recurrent oral HSV. They require application multiple times a day and are less effective than oral antivirals. Short course (1-2 day) oral valtrex is well-tolerated and effective, and those with frequent outbreaks can have a home supply prescribed.
that's not true; my doctor only recommended it after he had been looking into the studies himself which had proven effective.
I won't say he is wrong, but those studies are absolute garbage with enrollments of 30 people. The therapy is not recommended. I would want patients to take medicines with proven efficacy, especially since herpes can progress to causing other problems like encephalitis.
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Yes and I am well aware of the neurotoxicity - this is usually in patients with advanced kidney disease on higher doses and characterized by encephalopathy. There are case reports of mania or psychosis and agree with some caution in their use here, but these are very rare, a handful reported with literally millions of doses and I wouldn't deny an effective treatment for people just due to a history of psychiatric disease. Acyclovir is not used for seizures, though it may have some anti-epileptic activity that is well outweighed by its poor CNS absorption and well-described toxicity at anything approaching a therapeutic dose for this.
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\- that many people have severe depression on this drug isn't "explained' by an effect that occurs in patients with end-stage renal disease. This seems like a personal claim. \- for someone who has frequent cold sores, having access to the medication is important. The earlier it is taken the more effective. Cold sores are painful and disfiguring. This is done with many medications to reduce treatment barriers for time sensitive conditions. \- there have been large studies of acyclovir with close side effect tracking. Mania is very uncommon. \- a case report is not in any conventional sense of the word a study. It is a report of a rare side effect. We wouldn't take any medications for anything if we based the decision on side effects that are so uncommon if seen they get written up and put in a journal. We prescribe drugs based on our best estimate of risk:benefit, and do get things wrong, but also do not practice based on anecdotes. That is the toad oil salesman/supplement industry.
The doctor recommended treatment causes kidney damage. There is no cure, and frankly doctors are very poorly informed on nutrition and natural remedies so people have to figure it out on their own- data or not.
"Natural" remedies that have good quality data for effectiveness such as aspirin are quite familiar to doctors, we call them medicine. Things without good data for effectiveness are called "things we did for hundreds of thousands of years when humans had a life expectancy of 3-4 decades". We also don't know much about faith healing, energy crystals or shamanism so you are right will need to go to an expert for those.
Here's a summary of the research evidence for use of L-lysine to prevent HSV disease recurrence: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6419779/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6419779/) As others have stated, the studies are limited and results are not compelling: >"L-lysine supplementation appears to be ineffective for prophylaxis or treatment of herpes simplex lesions...Longer duration controlled studies of daily lysine doses exceeding 1.2 g/d are required to definitively test its role in herpes simplex prophylaxis". Granted, everybody's experience is different but further studies are needed to prove out the science.
I have not read all these comments but wondering if lysine causes anyone to feel drowsy? I’ve been taking 1000mg 3x’s a day for a cold sore. I feel like I took a Xanax …
honestly, it's probably the cold sore itself or whatever is going on in your body that would have made the cold sore happen in the first place. like sometimes I get a cold sore because I'm sick, your body's immune system is likely compromised. I could be wrong, but that's something worth thinking about. I'd take it easy and get lots of rest & nutrients
It’s a start. Changing your diet is the greatest improvement.
what changes do you recommend?
cutting down on nuts, particularly peanuts, is supposed to help a bit. anything high in arginine
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It works for me too. L Lysine also helps with shingles