A Guide to Over the Counter Cold Sore Medicine

While there are a bunch of cold sore remedies available to you with a prescription, you should become familiar with he store bought medicine options that you have ascess too. In this way, you can pick up something in an emergency without waiting for a prescription.

This article will provide you with information about many of the top medicine options available in stores. It will also inform you of the various positives and negatives associated with each of the over the counter cold sore medicine options named.

Different Kinds of Over the Counter Cold Sore Medications

Store bought cold sore medicines can be divided into 3 different groups, which are:

Moisturizers and Sunscreen: Abreva, Burt's Bees Sunscreen, Herpecin-L, and Herpetrol are among the most popular over the counter cold sore medicine products. These products help to keep skin soft. When skin is soft, it is supple, and this will protect it from over drying, cracking, and bleeding. Many cold sore lip balms are also sunscreens and will have zinc oxide in them to help ease your cold sore symptoms making your recovery process much easier.

Lenitive Agents: Denavir, Lipreve, Viroxyn, and Viraderm are some of the more popular over the counter cold sore medicine products. With the exception of Lipreve, which is an oral treatment, all of these medicines are a topical cream, which means they are applied on the skin. They are solely intended to be used externally and primarily used to ease symptoms associated with having a cold sore. These aids help to quicken recovery time instead of acting as curing agents. You can find a blend of Docosanol in some over the counter cold sore medicine items that are popular for quickly healing cold sores. One product, Banadyne-3, works as an alleviatory and benumbing agent.

Benumbing Agents: Orajel Multi-Action Medicine Gel, Zilactin Cold Sore Gel, Banadyne-3, Phenol, Lysine, Viradent Gel, Campho-phenizue, zinc, and tannic acid are the top sotre bought cold sore medicines. These products will make the affected area numb. This helps to minimize cold sore symptoms and halt the growth of the virus that causes cold sores, HSV type 1.

Assorted Over the Counter Cold Sore Medicines

Popular lip balms used to treat cold sores and minimize symptoms are Carmex and Blistex. These help to reduce irritation and maintain skin suppleness.

To relieve pain associated with cold sores, an ointment containing benzyl alcohol and benzocaine will be helpful. Ibuprofen, Anbesol, Zilactin, and Tylenol are the leading anesthetics used to minimize inflammation and associated redness. Topical antibiotics such as sunscreens and Polysporin can help to prevent sores from spreading.

Positives

Over the counter cold sore medicines can be very helpful when you need to minimize inflammation and redness associated with cold sores. They will help make the cold sore less noticeable as it heals. However, they will not rid your body of the virus.

Negatives

These products only treat the symptoms. They are used to reduce symptoms and control the spread of the virus that causes cold sores. However, using these will not guarantee that you will be able to completely get the virus out of your system.

Over the counter medicines can also have unintended side effects if not taken properly and as directed.