Foods To Avoid With Cold Sores For Proven Relief

Foods to avoid with cold sores are key foods that contain high levels of the amino acid arginine and low quantities of lysine.  Take a look now at what these foods are and how to easily cancel them out.

Lysine and arginine are two common amino acids found in foods.  They are the two most widely researched nutrients that determine which foods to avoid with cold sores.

Arginine and lysine work in the following way.

Cold sore events occur because of the replication process of herpes simplex virus (type 1 and 2).  This is a sub-microscopic virus that creates more virus by forcing your cells to become herpes factories.  When the cell becomes full of new virus, it is destroyed to release them.  This causes the cold sore ulcer.

Herpes simplex virus is pure protein and arginine is the main building block needed to create new herpes virus.  Your cells have a specific storage area where it stores additional arginine.

The same receptors are used to store lysine.  Lysine is a protein that cannot be used to create new virus.

When you consume high levels of lysine, the lysine will take the place of some of the arginine.  This creates a situation where the cell cannot support the production of new herpes virus because of low arginine levels.

A high lysine content in your cells often causes the herpes virus to give up and return to hibernation.  You have just prevented a cold sore.  Quite often you won't even know it.

Foods to avoid with cold sores. These are foods with higher levels of arginine.

---- Any type of milk or dark chocolate

---- Nuts such as almonds, walnuts, pecans, peanuts

---- Most seeds such as sunflower, pumpkin and sesame

---- Shell type seafood such as oysters and crab

---- Most cereal grains including wheat

---- Fruits such as grapes, oranges, tangerines

---- Many vegetables are ok, however onions, peas, brussel sprouts, and squash are high in arginine.

Sometimes certain foods are difficult to avoid or should not be avoided.  Many of the foods to avoid with cold sores are highly nutritional and essential for your good health.  These foods could be removed from your diet for a week or so - during the actual cold sore event - without harm.

Keep your immune system strong by not avoiding these foods for more than a couple weeks.  This avoidance program works as a treatment for a current cold sore.  It is not healthy for a prevention program.  If your immune system weakens, you could end up with more, not less, outbreaks.

A better solution would be to increase your lysine intake during a cold sore event.  This often stops a cold sore fast.  This is also a very good way to prevent future cold sores.

The following foods are higher in lysine and can be used to balance out the high arginine foods to avoid with cold sores - especially during the outbreak.

Fish (flounder is super-rich in lysine), chicken, beef, eggs, apples, papaya, beets, and all dairy products.  Cheeses and yogurt are very rich in lysine.  These will provide a preferred lysine to arginine ratio of 2 to 1.

Following a restricted diet, or intolerance of dairy products, may make these diet recommendations difficult or impossible for you.  Vegetarians would certainly have problems with a cold sore diet.

The best solution, for your convenience and good health, might be taking an additional lysine supplement.  It generally comes in 500 mg. capsules and is available nearly anywhere vitamins are sold.  Many folks take six to eight of these capsules a day during a cold sore and one or two capsules daily to prevent cold sores.

Is it safe to take lysine in these large doses?

Lysine is a common protein in most foods and is perfectly safe.  A six-ounce serving of flounder, mentioned previously, will give you about 5000 mg. (5 grams) of body-ready lysine.  The capsule form of lysine is not as absorbable but is much easier for many people.

That's right - you do not have to give up chocolate.  Increasing your lysine intake with high-lysine foods or supplements will often cancel out the effects of the arginine foods to avoid with cold sores.