There may be no doubt in your mind if you notice a hard, red cluster of bumps on or near your lip in the mirror: it is a cold painful one. But maybe you have never had a cold pain, or something about this feels different than others you have had before. How can you be sure that it is in fact a cold painful?
If this is the first time that it gets a cold pain, it can be frustrating to not know for sure what is happening in your body. But you are not the only one. According to the World Health Organization, more than half of the world’s population – around 3.7 billion people – have the virus that causes cold sores.
It is normal to have some doubt when other disorders look or feel like cold sores. Below we go through the most important characteristics of cold sores and try to separate from other, similar circumstances.
What cold sores look, feel and act
Cold slips are caused by a type of virus called the Herpes Simplex virus (HSV). Once you have sustained this virus, it will remain in your body for life. The Herpes Simplex virus will usually be in sleep, but it can occasionally pop up, resulting in a cold pain. When and how often you get cold sores, if you get them at all, depends on your unique immune system. Some people with HSV never get a cold pain, some only get one a year, and some get them a few times a year.
This is what you need to know about cold sores.
You can arrive a cold painful feeling
Cold slips are often preceded by a tingling, itching or burning feeling in the field of your lip where they will appear. This is called the prodromal stage and it can take a few hours to two days before one or more cold painful blisters develop.
Every time a cold painful weather appears in the same place
You will find that your cold sores are popping up at a certain place on or near your lip every time you get one. This is because the Herpes Simplex virus lives and travels along just one area of the nerve cells of the lips. It wants to stay in the same place, so if you have an HSV rehearsal, the resulting cold painful pain in the vicinity of the same nerve cells will be concentrated.
A cold painful follows the same phases
Every time you get a cold pain, it follows a similar progression:
- A tingling, itching or burning feeling starts a few hours or days before an outbreak on the site where the cold pain will take place (Prodromal Stage).
- After 1-2 days, one or more small blisters filled with liquid on or around the lips develop.
- After 3-4 days, the blisters and their liquid abnormalities burst. This is known as the ulcer phase or a crying phase. Cold slips are extremely contagious and they are the most contagious at this time.
- The blisters form crusts and begin to heal.
- The crusts become smaller and smaller and eventually disappear, so that usually no scar remain.
A cold pain takes about 10 days, but the first can linger longer
The cold painful progression, from their first performance to as soon as they are completely healed, takes on average 7-10 days. The first cold pain you ever get is often more intense and can last closer to three weeks to cure. It is often accompanied by flu -like symptoms.
A cold pain causes one or more blisters surrounded by inflamed skin
The appearance of a cold pain can vary: you may have one big blister or a cluster of different small ones. These blisters will form on the skin of your upper or lower lip, but can spread across the border of your lip and on the skin of your face. In rare cases you can get a blister near your nose or on your chin. The blisters are surrounded with red, inflamed skin and the liquid in it will be clear or yellow.
A cold pain appears after exposure to a trigger
You may have already discovered what causes you cold sores – this is your cold painful ‘trigger’. You can have more than one, and it can be something like cold weather, a disease, changes in your diet or stress. If you notice that spending time outside on a cold, windy winter day or recovering a nasty cold always seems to give a tingling, painful place on your lip, it can be your triggers.
Other types of mouth ulcers for which a cold pain can be seen
The above has sounds fairly clear for cold sores, but it appears that other common disorders – including pimples, ingrown hairs, ulcers, angular cheilitis, mucocelles and other lipblires – can share some of the same characteristics. But here is how they differ from cold sores:
It is rare to get a pimple or ingrown hair directly on the skin of your lip
Cold swears and pimples can be both soft and touch and full liquid. But unlike a pimple, a cold pain usually has a larger area with red, inflamed skin around it and no perceptible whitehead. You can see the liquid in a cold pain, and it must be clear or straw -colored, not white like pus.
Your lips have no oil glands or hair follicles, so it is rare that a pimple would form directly on the skin there. It doesn’t matter if it is a pimple or a cold pain, to pop, it will make it considerably worse. It is best to leave it alone.
The same applies to an ingrown hair. When a hair that is shaved, picked or waxed, incorrect and bends under the skin or bends back into the skin, it becomes an ingrown hair. It can cause itchy irritation, a red bump and a pimple. An ingrowed hair for a cold pain, or vice versa, mainly applies to people who shave the area around their mouths. This is where ingrown hair will occur, not on the skin of your lips.
A cancer pain or mucous membrane is in your mouth, not outside
Kankjes are small, round wounds that form on the tissue along the inside of the mouth. They can be caused by:
- Food and drink allergies
- Mouth injuries, such as accidentally biting on the inside of your cheek or are hit in the mouth that exercise
- Sensitivity to certain ingredients in toothpaste and mouthwash, such as sodium lauryl sulfate
In contrast to cold sores, ulcers are not contagious. They heal the tendency to heal alone in about two weeks, but there are ointments and mouthwashes available to speed up the healing process.
A mucocele, or an oral mucus cyst, is a harmless, liquid stuffed bump that will also appear on the inside of the mouth, usually the lower lip, when one of the salivary gland openings becomes hidden.
Mucoceles are most seen in children, but everyone can stand up who is younger than 30. They are caused by chronic lip biting or a mouth injury. Do not try to make the slime cyst pop themselves. It must disappear automatically in 3-6 weeks, but if it persists, you will visit a primary care provider or dentist for treatment.
Angular cheilitis forms dry cracks in the corners of your mouth
When saliva consistently builds up in the corners of your mouth, it irritates soft skin there while it dries. This dryness and irritation can lead to small, painful cracks and even a bacterial, fungal or fungal infection. This is a condition known as angular cheilitis.
Angular Cheilitis affects people of every age and has many underlying causes, including:
- A wrongly aligned bite
- Bad dentures
- Repetitive lip-smacking and thumb-sucking behaviors
- Thrush
- Diabetes
- Certain antibiotics and isotretinoin
- Shortcomings in iron or vitamin B
Angular cheilitis is not contagious and in most cases will not in most cases spread past the corners of the lips. It ensures that the skin looks dry, red, flakey and cracked, but does not cause blistering.
Angular Cheilitis tends to disappear in itself, but keeps the area clean and hydrated with ointments, such as petroleum jelly, to protect it.
Some lip and mouth blisters are the result of burns or allergic reactions
Blisters on the lip can have other causes that are not related to the Herpes Simplex virus. If you have recently burned your lips, or by consuming something that was far too hot or being in the sun for too long without sunscreen, you can be blistered by redness, pain and swelling.
An allergic reaction usually ensures that your lips swell everywhere, instead of just in one place. The same with a traumatic injury, as are hit in the mouth.
Poor combustion, injury or allergic reaction can hurt, but more often the resulting blister or swelling will be a direct consequence of the injury or exposure to the allergen.
Receive treatment for cold sores and more
If you are not sure whether the painful place on your lip is a cold painful or something else, make an appointment with primary care. Your doctor or doctor can examine your lip and perform all the necessary tests to tell you exactly what is going on.
Most cold sores heal themselves in 7-10 days. But with freely available or prescribed antiviral treatment, you can heal cold sores faster. Your doctor can prescribe antiviral medicines to reduce the severity and duration of cold sores. These drugs are most effective when they first start for the first time within 72 hours after the symptoms.
If you feel that you need care as quickly as possible, you can also get a cold painful diagnosis or an antiviral recipe online with Virtuwell.
If you take cold pain longer or feel more painful than normal, or if you get more than 6-8 fever levers every year, you make an appointment with first-line care. In some cases, your doctor can recommend a daily antiviral medication to prevent cold sores.
