Mum of two Louisa, 36, is a customer services advisor in the health care industry from East Sussex

Louisa says; 

“I got my first cold sore when I was twelve years old. 

I think I inherited my cold sores from a family member as a few people in my family have them.  

During my teenage years I got cold sores more frequently and they were really painful. As I got older I also found that peanuts triggered my cold sores.

As a teenager my cold sores were just terrible. I used to have days off school as they made me so upset and they were so painful. When I was at secondary school at aged about 14, I remember suffering with a whole crop of cold sores at the same time. I remember having to drink a cup of tea through a straw at one point as it was so painful.

Cold sores continued to plague me throughout my adulthood. However, over the years I have learnt to sense when I am going to have a cold sore outbreak.

I would always get a cold sore appear when I was having a night out or when a special event is coming up. They have ruined quite a few dates and special nights in the past. It’s always a stress leading up to any kind of special event, as you can be sure that a cold sore is going to totally ruin the day.

When you get a cold sore you are always worried that your date is looking at it all time and it makes you feel very self-conscious. You try to cover them up but lip sticks just don’t work and can often make them even more inflamed.

With each of my children I got a terrible outbreak afterwards, which is an extra worry as you can’t get your lips close to your baby when you have a live cold sore so you have to be really careful.

I would sometimes get three cold sores at the same time, which was agony and also very upsetting as they were so visible.

I’ve had people say to me things like ‘ewwww you have herpes! They look gross’ which always makes you feel great!

If I got a cold sore at the office I would put a big scarf round my neck to try and cover it up or wear my hair down to try and disguise it.  

Cold sores really knock your confidence and you are always researching ways to try and get rid of them quickly which makes you even more stressed and upset. I now have a permanent scar on my lip where I have picked so many cold sores due to the anxiety they caused.

I’ve tried literally all of the over the counter cold sore creams and patches. It was frustrating when people would try and recommend something to me and I would be like yep been there tried that and it didn’t work! Nothing from the chemist or on prescription ever worked for preventing or reducing my cold sores. I even resorted to trying toothpaste on them once, which stung like crazy and of course didn’t work. 

My life-changing dicovery came when my stepdad saw an article in the newspaper about a product called Lip Q Liquorice Rescue Lip Gel , which contains a concentrated extract of glycyrrhizic acid from liquorice root and had been trailed by the Herpes Virus Association and found to reduce the frequency and intensity of cold sores.

Thank goodness my stepdad read that article because this lip gel changed my life. 

When I first started using LipQ Rescue Lip Gel the cold sores would emerge but wouldn't last as long as they did before and wouldn’t be as big or painful. But now after years of using the lip gel, as long as I apply it several times at the first sign of a tingle in my lip, the cold sore often goes away completely within a few hours without even developing into a sore.

Or if a sore does appear sometimes, it’s much smaller and is so mild that hardly anyone would notice it unless I pointed it out. I also use the Lip Q Liquorice Balm daily as a lip balm which I has a preventative effect between cold sores. Then I use the rescue lip gel at the first sign of a tingle. 

There's no such thing as a cold sore cure as once you have the herpex simplex virus it never leaves your body. However these products 100% help reduce how many outbreaks you get and how severe they are. I now only get a few cold sores a year, whereas before they were every two months and much more severe.”