Cold sore treatment that doesn’t dry out eczema

On the strength of a glowing review from fellow eczema blogger Ruth over at whatallergy, I decided to give Herstat Cold Sore Care a go as a treatment for my parched and perennially viral encrusted lips.

Herstat ColdSore Care and Lip Care Stick

On top of eczema I am also very often plagued with cold sores – yes, I was first in the queue when they drew the skin condition lottery. This is very often as a result of the extremely dried out and parched skin on and around my lips – damaged skin is weak and vulnerable skin, just what the cold sore virus loves.

I was frankly terrified to leave my trusted Zovirax in the drawer, as this has been the only thing I have found to successfully stop cold sores in their tracks, but in an ironic catch-22, it always managed turn my lips into a Saharan flakey disaster, leaving the door wide open for more attacks.

During one particularly nasty attack, I counted around five budding baby sores, I decided that things couldn’t get much worse and so reached for a virgin tube of Herstat, one that I had ordered earlier.

The skin around my lips was so badly dried out it was hard to tell where the outline was. Not the best picture and doesn’t really capture the extent of the dryness – but …

Cracked-up and ready to sore

So I just slapped it on and hoped for the best. Well, frankly, the effect was been nothing short of biblical. 24 hours later, the dryness has gone and the sores have retreated. I kept up the treatment and my lips now feel supple and comfortable. I’m now carrying on with the little stick of lip salve with a similar set of ingredients (I think):

Herstat Lip Care Stick

I’m happy to report that this is also one of the best daily lip care products I’ve ever used – and believe me, my bedside table is a greasy graveyard of lip care potions.

After a little investigation into the ingredients via the Herstat website, rather disappointingly top of the list is plain old petroleum jelly. Yes, Vaseline. I have long had a bit of love hate relationship with Vaseline – on the one hand it often is the only thing to which I can turn to sort out my cracked-up skin but it is just so *greasy*, I feel like I’m slicked up and ready swim the channel. Hertstat, by contrast, appears to also contain some other emollient ingredients which makes the whole experience quite a bit more tolerable. Here’s what they have to say on the matter:

Herstat ColdSore Care ointment has been formulated to offer an ideal environment for effective healing. It does this by creating an emollient barrier over the affected area which helps retain moisture and protects against secondary infection. It has a pleasant vanilla aroma and is not sticky or greasy when applied. Plus, we use propolis as a preservative which means a tube of our ointment is self-preserving and will last a long time.

Alright then. Well, frankly Herstat had me at hello and I’m not planning on ever leaving the house without it!