Natural Cold Sore Cures

I have suffered with cold sores my whole life. After spending a day out in the sun, I could feel my lip starting to swell (you know the feeling). I frantically looked online to see if there was some new remedy out there. I discovered this site and saw so many good reviews about acetone I figured I'd give it a try. (I used to use BHT and lysine but that ceased to work for me.)

Miracle of miracles, the acetone worked! Several times of the day, I would press a q-tip dipped in 100% acetone onto the area until it stung and then removed it. The cold sore never even got to the tingle phase. By day two my lip was slightly swollen but only about a third of what it normally would have been. By day three it was 10% swollen with a simple scab that could be covered with lipstick. No blisters even. Unbelievable. A week later, the small scab is still there, but the sore is clearly receding to nothing.

Where has this been my whole life?! The acetone must just kill the virus! Thank you all for sharing your experience with this amazing remedy! So helpful.

My bottom lip was tingling all day. At the end of the day around 6pm, I looked in a zoom-in mirror and could see the horrendous 3 bumps forming. I immediately began applying acetone. I did this for 30 seconds-1 min at a time up every 20-30 minutes up until I went to bed around 10pm. I worked the next day and could still see the bumps, but they did not pop or grow. I went ahead and applied and applied nail polish remover in the morning before going to work and once in the afternoon. When I got home, I applied it again until I went to sleep multiple times. I kept a cotton pad with acetone on until it burned too much. On day 3, there was no longer a coldsore forming! I can't believe this actually worked :)

Last summer I had a beast of a cold sore. It was 6 in one!! I hadn't had one in about 15 years so it was very weird. Probably from vaccine shedding from other people.
For some reason I didn't think to check on here until about day 5. I tried acetone but the skin was already broken and it made it 10 times worse and left a scar too.

I think acetone must be used at the first signs and would be very effective but not once the skin has broken.

I haven't gotten cold sore breakouts very often but have had them since I was a child. I've even gone years without an outbreak. When I would get one it would be mild and I'd combat it with Lysine and oil of oregenal both orally and topically. Usually they wouldn't even get to a blister with this treatment. However, I recently had a really large one come out on my bottom lip and it took forever to come down and heal. What a pain! The area is still slightly raw and sensitive. Over the long weekend of the 4th of July I got a lot of sun and didn't drink enough water, drank alcohol and got totally dehydrated. I felt my lip burning. I woke up with 3 huge ones on my bottom lip coming up into blisters!!!

Panicking I scoured the internet and saw Cheri's post from 2021. I tried it and put acetone on each one with a q-tip for about 20 seconds each and 1 DAY LATER they had all scabbed over!!

This would have been at least a week or more without this remedy! Thank you!!

My husband had his first cold sore at 42 years old. Neither of us even knew what it was at first. He is very tough when it comes to pain and this thing was excruciating for him. I found this suggestion on Earth Clinic, thank God. He said there was a huge relief with the very first application of acetone. He applied it with a cotton ball only 4- 5 times a day (yes, it burns, but definitely worth it). He is on day 3 now and it is significantly smaller, scabbed over, and he has almost no pain or swelling on his lip. This would have been a miserable 2 week experience if it weren't for you all posting your effective treatments. Thank you Earth Clinic!!

Acetone for cold sores works. I also have used ice directly early on for a few hours off and on and that helps too.

However, the MOST important thing you can do to PREVENT cold sores is to NEVER consume ANY artificial sweeteners, which all contain aspartame, including almost any type of gum these days, diet sodas, diet drinks of ANY form, etc, as the aspartame WAKES the virus and activates cold sores. I have not had a cold sore in many years as a result of avoiding aspartame. Hope this helps someone.

Wow! Another satisfied acetone customer. I wish everything worked so well.

Another YEA for acetone for cold sores. I've gotten cold sores since I was a child, sometimes so deep it looked like someone put out a cigarette on my lip. Now I soak a cotton ball with acetone and press it to the cold sore for 20 seconds and after 2 or 3 applications the cold sore is on its way out. Every time.

Such a brilliant remedy, so cheap and SO much more effective than any expensive cream or Valtrex.

Absolutely, positively and without fail works 100% of the time

I'm 42 and I've gotten cold sores my whole life. Like all of you, I too have tried everything I could get my hands on including Dr. prescribed meds. Nothing. Ice seems to chill them out for a bit - but they always came back with a vengeance. I found that acetone works 100% of the time. 100%. I honestly don't care what any naysayer says. It's really that good. If you catch it at the tingle stage, then it stops there. If you catch it at the blister stage, the blisters immediately go down and your at the scab stage. Even that goes quicker. This is the closest thing to a medical miracle that I've experienced. The folks who suffer from this virus would understand that statement. I keep a little bottle of acetone in my home, my car, at work and in my luggage.

Read about this little home remedy yesterday after noticing a cluster of cold sores pop up on my lip when I woke up yesterday morning. Some of the reviews were good and some bad. I decided in a panic and with my wedding only 2 days away that it was worth a shot to try. Not big on the home remedies, but I have been getting cold sores since I was 5 years old (now 26), I have used any and all cold sore medicines, creams, tablets, you name it! None of which have been even close to successful! Last night before bed I held a cotton ball with fingernail polish remover over the nasty cluster of sores on my lip for about 6 minutes. The original post had advised leaving the cotton ball with the polish remover on the affected area for 30 minutes... YES 30 MINUTES. (Not sure how I feel about that one.) I noticed after the 6 minutes that the color of my lip was getting darker and out of fear for it bruising I went ahead and removed it. Immediately I noticed a difference in the affected area. It looked so much better! After wards I cleaned the affected area with hydrogen peroxide on another cotton ball and went to bed. I woke up this morning and to my surprise the clusters were no longer filled with that nasty liquid, they already had a nice scab on them ( the scab was almost the same color as my lips, as it did not look dark or irritated) By lunch time today everything is back to its original color, the scabs are almost completely gone, and the cluster is no longer noticeable unless I stand very close to the mirror. I am definitely forever in favor of this little remedy! Pretty surprised that such a simple solution works after spending TONS of money on medicines for it for 21 years! OH also...after using the nail polish remover BUT before using the hydrogen peroxide I gently cleaned the affected area with my fingers using luke warm tap water and antibacterial hand soap.

Good luck!!!

Nail varnish remover (acetone) on cotton wool held on cold sore for 10 mins a few times a day.

I cannot overemphasize how much this works; I currently have a very big very sore collection of cold sores & I tried nail varnish remover (as I read it somewhere else) & I could not believe how much it helped within an hour! It sounds drastic & it does sting a lot but the pain is over quickly & cold sore is drastically improved after 1 go!

I've tried everything in the past; taking lysine (cold sores still appeared), zovirax on first tingle (actually think moistening it made it come out not disappear), dabbing with alcohol (helps a v small bit), doing a lot of different stress management techniques to avoid triggers (sleep, exercise, eating well) all to no avail; the nail varnish remover is the only thing where I've actually seen a difference.

One thing I will say about prevention that works is not to let your lips get chapped; most of the times I get a cold sore its after my lips are v dry and chapped; they crack & then out pops a cold score.

I hope it helps someone else.

I have suffered from cold sores ever since I was in elementary school. I am currently 20 years old. I usually get cold sores once a year. But this past year (2015), I got two of them. To top that off, I got one at the beginning of the new year. These are the WORST. I have tried nearly everything. This past time I had a cold sore, I read on the internet that nail polish remover really works. And man was that right! I caught mine before it got too bad.

I put the acetone on it once every hour of the day. Hold it for 20 seconds, IT WILL BURN! But it works. The next morning, my cold sore was almost gone. It wasn't even noticeable! I continued the process of applying acetone every hour of the day until it was gone.

It also helps to take the vitamin L-lysine. I also drink plenty of milk when I have cold sores, because milk also contains lysine.

I hope this was helpful!

Acetone worked very well for me. I get cold sores about once a year, usually in the Fall, when my lips start to chap from the cold. I didn't hear about Acetone soon enough to prevent the outbreak of my first cold sore this year - I was already on day 3 after the blisters had broken when I discovered this remedy. I started using it then - and it did speed healing greatly! In fact, it worked so well that I figured I didn't need to use it anymore, that my cold sore would be nearly gone by the next day or so, so I stopped using it. Unfortunately, when I stopped, it got worse the next day. I had to start using it again to see improvement. It made a huge difference in the speed of healing and that was with spotty/very late use!

Also - normally when I have a cold sore outbreak I get at least one or two, sometimes up to four in a row. Sure enough, I started getting not one but two more as the first began healing. I hit them with the Acetone on a cotton swab, pressing it into the newly forming bump/blisters, for at least 30 seconds, at least once every two hours for one day. By the next day - both were completely gone - they never continued forming!

A couple of days later, I started getting yet another, right next to where the first one was. I put Acetone on about every two hours or so, all day long. The next day - the swelling, bump and forming blisters are GONE! Completely! I feel confident that I will never have another cold sore again as long as I catch it in time and always have 100% pure Acetone on hand.

Acetone is working really well. Had the worst cold sore of my life a month ago and now a month later another one. I felt the tingling and immediately started with Hydrogen peroxide. Later read on here that acetone works very well too so I started using that. It has dried out the cold sore better than the HP. The cold sore is barely visible and has not swollen huge or burst or anything. it is Just red and a little swollen, It is very dried out and seems to be going straight to scabbing, although you cant really see a real "scab" its just dried out and dry skin but you cant tell unless you look real close in the mirror. This sore is in the same spot as the really bad one a month ago but also spread down the lip even more than the really bad one. I feel that if I would not have used the acetone this sore would have been the worst one ever. The first day I felt the tingling I used HP. The next day no sign of a sore but still put HP on it for about 10 min twice that day. Day 3 I woke up and the sore started to pop up like normally, reddish and a glossy bump. It wasn't too big, yet! It was about the size of Lincolns head on a penny. Immediately started to soak with acetone. It went down in swelling and dried out quick. Still red though. Next day, day 4, which is today, I woke up and it looked really good. swelling down still, still dried out, still a little red. Soaking in Acetone again this morning. Worked all day and it barely noticeable, barley swollen, barely red. Applying again tonight. I'm hoping that it continues to go down and not have a brown scab. Hopefully just dry crusty skin scab that you can't really see like it is now. So it should be healed within a week hopefully. which is amazing because before it would be a week before it even scabbed and then at least another week with bleeding nasty huge scab on my lip.

This is a GOD send, helping soo much. I am truly grateful!

Sorry, for me acetone didn't seem to help even least. The only thing that has shown any evidence of helping me reduce the growth of a cold sore (especially if started early) is Lactoferrin (taken orally).