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Dan (Denver, Colorado) on 02/09/2010:
Warning
I dabbed acetone on my face before going to bed one night and I woke up with chemical burns on my tongue and it triggered Bell's Palsy. Don't do it!
You have to keep using it, though, for at least an hour or two. I'm in my 50s and have had cold sores ever since I was a little kid. I have found that if you can attack them quickly and aggressively, you can diminish them.
First, get a bottle of acetone nail polish remover and an over-the-counter strong cold sore ointment. First put the ointment on and let it sit there for a few minutes, then swab the sore with nail polish remover until the swab isn't cold anymore. Apply the ointment, and swab again. This takes two or three hours, but it's worth it. If you catch it early enough, the swelling will go down quite a bit and may be almost unnoticeable in the morning. I'm usually able to conceal it with a cover stick and a little powder the next day.
Acetone cured my cold sore! Stressing about Thanksgiving arrangements, pleasing family memebers,etc. which triggered a cold sore on my lower lip about the size of a nickel. So the day before thanksgiving I checked earthclinic and saw the acetone remedy for clod sores..I figured what the heck...I had already tried the over-the-counter remedies in the past without much luck so I applied the nail polish remover with a q-tip about four times that day then applied an anti-bacterial cream to clear up any infection. Overnight I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had reduced the cold sore to about 1/4 its original size! Flat, not sore, tingly or anything.Applied a small dab of makeup for Thanksgiving dinner and it wasn't even visible! Yea! Thanks Earthclinic!!
YEP!!! This seems to be a miracle solution for herpes, both oral and genital. I get both but if I take a cotton swab and dip it in acetone and hold it on the sores for several seconds (or as long as I can) they go away super fast. I keep putting the acetone on the sores throughout the day to dry them up and both oral and genital last only a few days at the most!! My friend's boyfriend tried the acetone on his genital herpes on his last breakout and they never became sores and disappeared in two days. Outbreaks don't seem to be as often either. I also take L-Lysine too but its the acetone that really does that trick.
Just had an GH outbreak after going 9 years without one! It was a small cluster on the outside labia (not on the mucous membrane) I was devastated and didnt want to have to go through weeks of pain. I was willing to try anything, and i did! I tried the acetone remover trick and IT WORKED. I pressed a q tip to the small cluster of sores that had not broken open yet, about 10 times yesterday and kept the area VERY DRY with cornstarch all day and night. Today, they are healing over and almost gone! they didnt break open, they didnt scab over, they didnt get any bigger...they are healing and almost gone. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
On Monday I woke up and felt a tingling feeling in and around my nose. I immediately jumped up and cleaned my face. After washing I put novitra and abreva around the area that was tingling. This method use to work for me however it seems like with any remedy that works my system eventually become immune to the concoction or remedy and I have to find something else. Well that is exactly what happened to me this time around. I ended up with a full blown cold sore, starting in one nostril and traveling around to the other one with a cluster all on the bridge of my nose ending on the very brim of my right nostril. Very big and very embarrassing! Needless to say there went my entire week. I took off two days of work and it ruined my weekend. Just when I thought the worst was over, I was going to bed on Saturday and prepared to go through my nightly routine of washing my face etc, and low and behold there was a small tingling feeling on my upper lip. I'm screaming to myself this can't be happening. I can't afford to take off anymore work and expect to have a job when I come back but I can't endure another week of having an embarrassing cold sore at work. I put some Abreva and novitra on it and when I went back approximately 5 minutes later, it appeared to be forming a cluster. I immediately jump on line to see if I can find any type of alternative treatment and I came across this website. After reading all the comment I realized it was extremely late and I had to work with what I had. So I immediately went to work. I ran to the sink and dabbed a Q-tip in Acetone nail polish remover. I left it on the cluster for about 2-3 minutes. I then grabbed an ice cube from the freezer and compressed it against the sore blister until it had completely melted. I then dipped another Q-tip into the nail polish remover and left it on for 2-3 minutes. I put some more Abreva and Novitra on it and went to bed. When I woke up the thing was completely gone. Just to be sure I repeated all of these steps again and plane to do it again before I go to bed. But so far so good. I just wanted thank everyone for posting their remedies. If they hadn't, I'd probably be out of a job right now.
I just want to say Dont use nail polish remover~!!! I tried this remedy and gave myself a bad chemical burn on my face. :-( Now I wish it was just a cold sore. I'll stick to L-Lysine in the future!
While I am sure that acetone will work against cold sores, you should never use acetone or put it on your skin and nails. There's a reason that acetone smells nasty - because it actually IS nasty. It can cause cancer and is poisonous. NEVER put on your skin what you cannot put in your mouth. Poisons can enter your body through your skin, and many cosmetics are, unfotunately, poisonous.
This may sound strange, but when I feel a sore spot beginning to come on my lip, I take fingernail polish remover and dab it on the spot with my finger, 3-4 times a day. In many instances the eruption never happens... and if it does, it immediately starts drying up. I've taken care of my blisters for about 25 years this way with no adverse side effects. Works better than anything you can buy at the Drug Store!
Acetone nail polish remover is fabulous for cold sores! If you can catch it just when there is the tingle but not quite a blister yet, it often never gets any bigger than a tiny blister and it disappears without ever reaching the scab or the even worse, 'scab off' stage. Sometimes I can tell it's going to be a doozy but I dab it whenever I think of it and it 's just so much better than I have ever experienced and each stage lasts only half the time.
I read on another site that nail polish remover works on cold sores so I tried it. With in two days it was gone. I put on the cold sore twice a day. I didn't have any of the usual scabbing either. So it was really great. Another thing that works really well is the amino acid L-Lysine. Before I found out about the nail polish remover I used to take L-Lysine alone which helped the reduce outbreak time. Next time I get a cold sore I probably will use both.
This was for oral herpes - I simply put acetone polish remover on it at night. When I wake up it's usually gone. It burns incredibly bad but hey, the sore is gone.
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