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The Importance of Foods to fight Cold Sores
By Robert H Black
After you've been infected, it's not too difficult to reduce the frequency of your cold sore outbreaks. Eat healthily to give your immune system its optimum chance of fighting back. Restrict your intake of foods rich in arginine. These are things such as seeds, chocolate, grain cereals, peas, gelatine, beer, cashews and peanuts. Arginine is an amino acid which occurs naturally and is needed by the cold sore virus to grow. Therefore if you can prevent yourself from taking in too many nutrients containing arginine you will go a long way in reducing the incidence of outbreaks of cold sores.
At the other end of the scale is another amino acid called lysine. However lysine doesn't encourage cold sores like arginine does; lysine seems to stifle them. Some people have found that taking a dose of 1,000 mg of lysine per day at the start of a cold sore outbreak does appear to contain the virus. This should then be followed up by further doses three times a day for several days to get maximum impact.
Try a whole foods diet that includes plenty of fiber and foods producing alkali, but excludes sugar and refined foods. This can help prevent further attacks. Eat high quality foods rich in nutrients such as fresh organic vegetables. Since people generally don't take the recommended daily intake of minerals and vitamins, it would be strongly advised, particularly during a cold sore outbreak, to take vitamin supplements.
Caffeine, contained in either food or drinks, can make some people more prone to cold sore outbreaks than others. The type of things to be very wary of include coffee, chocolate and some cold soft drinks. Try also to avoid foods containing a lot of salt; they can irritate the cold sores and make them a lot worse than before. In fact it would certainly be a good idea to completely cut out salty foods from your diet until the cold sores have cleared up. Salty foods can irritate your cold sores and cause them to become extremely painful.
Avoid smoking and keep your consumption of alcohol to an absolute minimum. But remember, it is not only the types of food you eat that it is important but also keep a close eye on your general health levels, particularly stress levels.
About the Author
Robert owns Cold-Sore-Free, a web site full of tips for sufferers to deal with, and overcome Cold Sores. For more free information go to Cold Sore Free
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