A good cold sore treatment can really be a blessed relief for cold sore victims like you and me.

And, if you're like me, you want a cold sore treatment that will not only give you a lot of comfort right now, but will hopefully shorten the healing time so you can get on with your life. That's the beauty of this well proven cold sore treatment.

I'm always searching for a better cold sore treatment. I have many good friends at Mayo who I've partnered with for research purposes over the past 33 years. But it's important to keep in mind that the following cold sore treatment methods are not presented as medical advice - only as information for your consideration. There is no substitute for a one-on-one relationship with a medical professional.

By far, the most popular cold sore treatment is the application of ice. It slows down metabolism, numbs the area, discourages the virus from replicating, and is readily available. Apply ice for 10 minutes at a time to your cold sores, maybe 3 times an hour, as a very basic cold sore treatment.

With this cold sore treatment, if I could catch the cold sores at the first tingle and apply the ice, it delayed - and sometimes prevented - the cold sores from actually moving into the blister stage. If a blister does form, this cold sore treatment still works great for providing blessed comfort. Because it does slow down metabolism, it also will slow down the healing of your cold sores. Best not to use it as much during the healing phase of your cold sores as a cold sore treatment.

A fishing buddy of mine - a Mayo doctor - while on an outing on the Mississippi, revealed his secret cold sore treatment.

His cold sore treatment involves the use of lemon balm tea.

These tea bags can be found for cheap anywhere you find specialty teas. If the lemon balm is not "stand alone" but in a blend with other herbs, that will usually be just fine too - as long as lemon balm is the primary.

Dr. W. explained that he discovered lemon balm herb has anti-viral properties and is a natural cold sore treatment. He took a 16 - 20 ounce container of bottled water. He then brewed a strong batch of lemon balm tea using one tea bag per 4 ounces - then froze the tea bags - using these in place of the plain ice cold sore treatment.

You get the comforting effect of ice plus, as the tea-bag melts, the application of the anti-viral properties of lemon balm. He stored the tea back in the original bottles for convenience and further cold sore treatment.

Additionally, Dr. W. - to supercharge this cold sore treatment - would sip the lemon balm tea and apply the tea liquid to the cold sores with a cotton ball between lemon balm ice sessions.

If you're the rare person who gets cold sores inside the mouth, you'll find they are very difficult to deal with. This may be exactly the cold sore treatment for you. Use the lemon balm tea as a mouthwash, then swallow for an additional boost. Listerine has worked well as a cold sore treatment, both in the mouth and applied externally, but it stings like crazy.

I also found that freezing the tea and sucking on the lemon balm ice chips is very effective and comforting as an in-the-mouth cold sore treatment.

I tried his cold sore treatment and it worked great for my family too, back when we used to get cold sores frequently. Quite a vast improvement on the old ice method.

This cold sore treatment, using lemon balm frozen tea bags, is a much better choice than plain ice during the healing stages of your cold sores. Although you are slowing metabolism, you are also killing many viruses with this cold sore treatment.

There are many other reported highly effective cold sore treatment methods that you can try. These include tea tree oil, dmso, olive leaf oil, lysine, zinc, yogurt, aloe vera and more. Lysine and zinc do not work well applied directly because the size of their molecules are too large for effective absorption. Lysine and zinc are better used as internal support supplements.

We have tested every over-the-counter cold sore treatment - at least all that we could find. We found they are great for comfort but none of them did anything to actually kill the virus or speed healing.

Keep in mind that the best and most effective cold sore treatment will be topical - directly applied - for any open surface lesion like a cold sore.

I hope you, too, will find this to be an excellent, cheap, and useful cold sore treatment.