Category: Top » Health » Alternative-medicine »

Author: bcured | Total views: 155 Comments: 0
Word Count: 835 Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 1:41 PM

The Truth About Herpes

Genital herpes is a lifelong viral disease. That means once you get it-you have it for life. The first outbreak usually occurs within 2-10 days of exposure to the virus. Men or women can get lesions within the urinary tract, around or inside the anus on the buttocks thighs or other parts of the body.

Usually the lesions start as reddened bumps which evolve over hours or days into blisters/open sores which crust over, dry up and heal. Sometimes a second crop of lesions occur. The initial infection may be severe and have more generalized symptoms such as fever, headache and muscle aches.

However, these lesions are not the only symptom of an initial outbreak. Symptoms of genital herpes can vary in appearance and intensity. In many cases the outbreak is mild, perhaps just a bit of itchy or tender skin, or perhaps it's mistaken for jock itch. Some people just have painful or difficulty urinating during a primary infection. Others have vaginal discharge that they mistake as a symptom for another vaginal infection. Still others have no symptoms at all.

After initial infection, the virus travels up the nerve that supplies the skin in the area of the outbreak and settles in at the base of the spine. This is called dormancy. When the virus travels back down the nerve and causes an outbreak, this is called recurrence. Recurrent outbreaks can occur days, weeks, months or years after the initial outbreak. Or, recurrence may never occur.

Most people who are infected with HSV2-don't know they have it. Some young women who don't even know that they have the virus that causes genital herpes. They may have no symptoms, they may not have been tested and they may be actively shedding the virus in their genital tracts. They are basically infectious - and they don't know it. The statistics are sobering. Nationwide at least 45 million people 12 and older have genital herpes. That's one out of five adolescents or adults. It is typically caused by HSV2.

People with no symptoms still shed the virus intermittently in the genital tract. That means "without any signs of a rash or sores" you still can transfer the virus to others. What's tricky about genital herpes is that you don't have to have an outbreak to infect another person. The virus can be present on the skin, usually at the place of first infection, without causing symptoms. That's called asymptomatic shedding. This is why herpes is called a silent epidemic. The disease can easily be transmitted from person to person with complete unawareness of disease presence.

When you get screened for STDs it does not include a SCREEN FOR HERPES-so if that is a concern - you need to specifically ask for that to be included. If you are considering screening for HSV2 - know the possible testing methods and which have high sensitivity:

•· Clinical exam has a poor record.

•· Polymerase chain reaction assays-not approved by FDA though they have good sensitivity -not all labs offer this.

•· PAP smear has a low sensitivity.

•· Serology tests can result in false-positives.

•· HSV glycoprotein G1(HSV1 test) and G2 (HSV2 test) have varying sensitivity so if you do get a positive you should follow up with another test to confirm (Western blot).

In some states it is against the law to knowingly transfer an STD to another person (including HSV2) so you should always let prospective partners know.

If you have herpes then you are probably familiar with the drug acyclovir. It's an anti-viral agent that is often recommended to patients with HSV2 so that recurrences of active herpes are diminished. The problem is that it has a wide variety of side effects including a metal-like after taste, dry mouth, and constipation and makes the virus that is present, more likely to evolve into a mutant form, that is very resistant to the current treatments.

So the emergence of aciclovir-resistant virus strains has created the need for the development of new effective antiviral agents. Recent scientific studies of medicinal antiviral plant extracts show very encouraging results, and have sparked a new methodology for treating herpes.

Studies of these antiviral extracts demonstrate that many of these compounds exhibit significant anti-herpetic activity. Several actually inactivate HSV with great effectiveness. These antiviral extracts represent new effective treatment options for therapeutic use as virucidal agents for recurring herpes infections.

The undeniable and profound pharmacological effects of OutbreakBalm-Rx support its therapeutic use. The effectiveness of this treatment against herpes represents real hope.

We know that the extracts in OutbreakBalm-Rx have a direct action to eliminate viruses. A clinical study performed in 1999 with the extracts in OutbreakBalm-Rx and their components in vivo against the herpes virus type 2 showed the extracts effectively killed the life span of the herpes virus upon exposure.