Distraught mum, was at her wits ends about her teenage daughter's cold sores Naomi, 16, whose school attendance and self confidence were being badly affected by her monthly outbreaks of cold sores.

BY  Nina Thorpe, 43, a legal secretary from Ryde on the Isle of Wight 3 July, 2007

"By this summer it had got the stage where Naomi was taking four of five days a month off school because of her cold sores. She had reached that age when she was starting to have boyfriends and spent about an hour each day before school doing her hair and make up." says Nina"We were having these awful rows every month but no matter what I said or how angry I got Naomi would not to school when she had cold sores. And despite being angry with her I could see her point. Ever since she was 12 she has had them. They break out in four or five at a time and her whole bottom lip looks blistered, red and swollen and no amount of make up can cover it up. I don’t know where she picked the cold sore virus up from, but it’s been hell ever since."

"We have tried every medication and remedy under the sun but nothing prevents them from coming back. There are creams from the doctor that can help get rid of them once they have arrived, but even at best they take about five days to go, and at worst they hand around for weeks. I was even told once by a friend that rubbing perfume on them helped, poor Naomi was in agony as it stung like hell, and of course didn’t work."

"But frankly this summer I became desperate. We went on a holiday to France for two weeks with Naomi’s Dad, Pete, and her younger brother Simon, and as soon as we got in the sun she had an outbreak and she barely left the apartment for the entire two weeks. I felt so sorry for her and so helpless."

"She had a boyfriend over the summer but she ended up breaking it off because she every time she got an outbreak she’d refuse to see him and of course he got fed up so she felt it was easier to end it than to tell him about her cold sores."

"Teenagers are sensitive enough as it is, without something like this. Naomi is a clever girl and has always done well at school but since the start of the year her school work began to fall behind because she kept bunking off. I was getting letters from the school, it was just awful."

"After we came back from holiday I had had enough. I was seriously concerned about Naomi going into her final year of GCSE’s and taking so much time off school and I felt I was loosing the brilliant outgoing daughter I once had. I felt I had to find something for her cold sores myself. I had read an article in the paper on holiday about a device that used heat to kill the cold sores. I immediately sent off for one and I got Naomi to use it every day. It made no difference, and the cold sores came back as viciously as they always had. I also bought her fish oil supplements and zinc, which I had read can help and I made her drink green tea every morning (which she hated), but it was all to no avail."

"I felt exhausted trying to find something that worked and was discussing with a group of other mums on a night out, when one of them mentioned something she had read in a health magazine about using liquorice to cure cold sores. The minute I got home I was straight onto the internet and put in a search for liquorice and cold sores. Immediately the Skin Shop site came up and on it was a lip treatment balm containing something called glycyrrhizic acid, which is an extract from liquorice and claimed not only to get rid of cold sores but to prevent them coming back. I ordered some then and there as it wasn’t expensive. I doubted it would work either but I felt I needed to keep trying for Naomi’s sake as no one else was going to help her and nothing the doctors gave us seemed to work."