How do I Get Rid of a Canker Sore?

First and foremost, doctors say, to prevent canker sores you should avoid toothpastes with sodium lauryl sulfate, or SLS. SLS is a foaming agent in many brand name toothpastes, and studies done show that people who suffer from canker sores are up to 80% less likely to get those sores if they use toothpaste without SLS in them. I've listed a couple of these brands in the sidebar to the right if you're curious about which toothpastes canker sore suffers should use.

There are a number of possible canker sore causes, but nothing is certain. Stress could be causing your canker sores. Eating crunchy foods or foods with sharp edges, like chips, and spicy foods can be the cause of canker sores as well.

Even nutritional deficiencies have been attributed to recurring canker sores. Some professionals say that if you're experiencing enough canker sore episodes, you should keep a dietary journal to help your doctor recognize a pattern, and form canker-free diet from that. For canker sore relief, it is recommended that you try Benadryl Allergy liquid.

The suggested procedure for using Benadryl to relieve the pain from canker sores involves taking a spoonful of the medicine and swishing it over the canker sore for no less than a minute, after which you should spit the medicine out. You can do this several times a day for as long as you have the canker sore, but no more than six times a day. If a canker sore is particularly painful, you should try using a product like Orabase by Colgate.

Orabase contains benzocaine, a local anesthetic that can be applied to the canker sore to relieve severe pain. There are a number of products like Orabase on the market, and anything that contains benzocaine, lidocaine, or phenol—really, any type of local anesthetic—should do the trick if you have a particularly painful canker sore. Antibacterial agents have shown to help treat and get rid of canker sores.

When I say antibacterial agents, what I mean to say is any mouthwash that claims to kill bacteria. Mouthwashes like Listerine or Scope are perfect examples of antibacterial agents, but if you're not too keen on using a mouthwash you can always go with an iodine-based wash as well. Iodine makes for a great canker sore cure if applied regularly, but don't swallow it.

Boy, oh boy, there are a load of canker sore remedies on the market today. I was surprised, actually, to see just how many remedies there were. You can't go online and swing the proverbial dead cat without hitting a canker sore relief/treatment.

The thing about canker sore remedies (usually ointments), is that they all pretty much function the same: they use a chemical (usually benzocaine) to kill the pain caused by canker sores, and at the same time include some sort of antiseptic ingredient as well. Actually, a lot of them don't even use antiseptics, but an ingredient that also covers the tongue, or gums, or wherever you have the canker sore with a film to help protect it from the other things you put in your mouth. I don't want to know what you're putting in your mouth, but I will say that these treatments are a good thing because canker sores can't really be cured--it just takes time for them to heal.

If the canker sore remedy you're looking at says it dulls the pain and protects the sore, then that's good enough.

I’m going to give you a quick little treatment to try that my friend Alicia discovered on her own (and I’ve tried independently to find that it does often work, sometimes in under 24 hours), and then I’ll give you my own personal favorite method that I’ve found to be even more effective (though it can take a couple days, at most, to work) plus how to prevent almost all future cold sore outbreaks. “I woke up and my cold sore was already open, but this is what I did to have it gone by the next morning…I melted an entire ice cube on my sore, even tho it’s a little painful at first..Then dab the sore to dry it and put rubbing alcohol on immediately after with a Q-tip..I did this once every 30 min. She used rubbing alcohol, I’ve heard that Benzyl alcohol is actually more effective (though difficult to find), and I’ve found Witch Hazel to be excellent for this purpose, personally.

Also, I’d also recommending take plenty of Vitamin C to help boost your immune system along with Vitamin B-12 and Lysine, both of which have been shown to reduce the duration of an outbreak. Ice really helps with the pain and irritation, but I also personally think that it slows down the development of the cold sore because lowering the temperature slows down the virus (you know how cold temperatures slow down an organism’s metabolism, which is why they lower the body temperatures of people who have had a heart attack so they have longer to work? Also, I’d recommend that you use a damp washcloth and soap to keep the cold sore clean and dry at all times (wash every two hours), just remember to use a new washcloth each time (the old ones are contaminated and need to go to the laundry straight away).

This is going to go into a bit of detail, there’s going to be a bit of science and some medical terms, but if you’ll stick with me til the end you’ll really have an excellent understanding of how this nasty little virus works and how a few simple tweaks in what you eat (most importantly: what to stop eating) and maybe a special supplement you probably haven’t heard of before (don’t worry, I’m not selling it and it’s not expensive) can not only eliminate your cold sore in a day or two but also prevent them from every coming back again. What causes a cold sore? A cold sore is an outward symptom of an outbreak of the Herpes Simplex Virus (usually Type 1, aka “HSV-1?

, although HSV-2 can cause oral herpes) usually due to a decreased in immune function, a very common cause of which is exposure to cold weather hence the name “cold sore”. The herpes virus remains dormant in the sensory nerve cells of your face until an outbreak, and no, sorry, there’s no cure: once you’ve been infected, you’ve got it for life. It’s almost always going to be the type 1 strain (HSV-1) of herpes that causes oral cold sores, however cases of HSV-2 causing them have been documented, so it’s possible, although rare.

However, 1 in 6 cases of genital herpes are causes by HSV-1 (genital herpes is usually associated with HSV-2), so that’s somewhat more likely, although the old axiom that if it’s above the waist it’s HSV-1 and if it’s below the waist it’s HSV-2 does still generally hold true. How Did I Originally Get Infected? Or: WHY GRANDMA WHY?!?!

Studies have shown that, the vast majority of the time, oral herpes is transmitted most commonly in someone’s youth when they are kissed by a relative who’s infected and suffering from an active cold sore outbreak–yeah, that sucks. This is especially likely if you started getting cold sores when you were a small child, which would mean that you were infected when you were very young and therefore most likely acquired it from close contact with an infected relative suffering from an active outbreak. If you acquired it later in life then something else is probably the cause, most likely that you acquired it from an intimate partner through physical contact i.e.

Kissing someone with a cold sore. There’s a great variety of treatments that myself and my friends have tried over the years: most of us originally went the prescription-combined-with-OTC (over-the-counter) route where we were prescribed something like Acyclovir or Valacyclovir and then used an OTC cream like Abreva. Over the years we’ve found (myself included) that the best those can do is to shave 1 maybe 2 days off of an outbreak, and that’s about it.

We’ve found, through trial-and-error between us over the years, that there are more effective remedies you can put together in your kitchen. Not only that, but there are preventative measures that you can take which will often prevent a cold sore outbreak altogether from happening again, ever, from supplements like l-lysine and Vitamin B-12 to minor but hugely effective little diet changes like avoiding vinegar at certain times because it lowers your blood pH levels and creates an environment much more favorable to the virus replicating and wreaking havoc on your face. The Herpes Simplex Type I virus that causes your cold sores has a very narrow pH range that its environment must be within for it to be able to live and reproduce (by the way, pH is just how acidic or basic something is–acids have a low pH and bases, such as lye, have a high pH) your body’s own pH range can easily sway into this territory from time to time due to a number of factors, the most common causes of which are stress, decreased immune function, certain foods, lack of sleep, and excess sunlight–now, where have you seen these factors mentioned before?

Probably in an article you read about the most common triggers for cold sores, right? Even if you haven’t read about it I’m sure you already know it anyway because you almost certainly would have noticed it: your cold sores tend to occur when you’re stressed out, when your immune system is down (this most commonly occurs when you’re ill or when it’s very cold out), when your diet changes (usually in an unhealthy way, such as the addition of junk food you weren’t eating before), when you’re not getting enough sleep, etc., right? The reason for this is that when you allow these things to happen to you, you’re creating an environment that is the most favorable for the virus to reproduce and live in (it’s when the virus starts suddenly massively reproducing that you get cold sores) by altering your normal pH level for the worse and making it very difficult for your immune system to keep the virus at bay, which it does most of the time, which is why you don’t have cold sores most of the time–your immune system is doing it’s job, it’s only when you make it difficult for it to do its job that problems start to pop up.

So, essentially, if you can get your pH level back to normal then the cold sores vanish (this is a bit of an oversimplification, but I just don’t have the room here to explain the whole process). Plus, if you just follow a couple simple guidelines concerning diet and cheap, over-the-counter supplements, you can possibly prevent them from ever coming back, or at least make them very rare (most people who follow the program described below will go several years between cold sores, which is usually a huge improvement for them). Now, how do you do that?

My friend Derek, after a couple years of experimentation (primarily on himself! He suffered horribly from cold sores for years) and some consultation with several doctors and herbal specialists, came up with a program he shared with me a couple years back that took some things we already knew about how to get rid of cold sores (taking l-lysine, avoiding stress and too much sunlight, yada yada) to a whole other level, I mean I was just completely blown away, what he originally showed me was a multi-page, super-detailed program he came up with that utilized a few small (as in they won’t inconvenience you) adjustments in diet that make a big difference primarily involving what not to eat, along with a combination of several herbal supplements (one is l-lysine, but the dosage is different from what you’d normally take since you’re combining it with other supplements) including a new one I’d never heard of called “cat’s claw” that came from some weird tree bark in the Peruvian rain forest, plus a couple others that, when combined, have a very powerful and immediate effect on your body’s pH level and can quickly bring the Herpes virus to a dead halt, but they have to be combined just right in the correct dosages, plus your diet has to be right because if you’re eating any of the several things that can throw off your pH level then it might not work. He’s currently put together a fantastic 84-page report you can get here (it’s pretty easy reading, you can get through it in a couple hours, no worries) that I highly recommend you check out, just listen to what the guy has to say, he knows what he’s doing believe me.

I wish I could just give the whole thing to you here, but it’s 84 pages long and there’s just no way I can fit that into a blog post, plus he won’t let me due to copyright issues (I asked already, in fact I had to be careful about how much I gave away to you here about his method!). I just can’t tell you how much of a difference this has made in my life, I used to suffer from cold sores nearly every other month, it was horrible: cold outside? Cold sore bonus, yay!

Have trouble sleeping? I haven’t had one in nearly 3 1/2 years now, and it all started when I first got that e-mail from Derek detailing something he spent years testing and researching and months writing the rough draft.