Make Cold Sores Go Away More Quickly With Laser Dentistry

You’ve been looking forward to a night out with friends all week, but you wake one morning and feel the telltale signs of a cold sore brewing at the corner of your mouth. Or perhaps you need to present at a meeting in a few days, and you’re horrified to see a cold sore pop up.

Let’s face it, cold sores are never welcome, and aside from being unsightly, they’re also quite painful for such a seemingly small issue.

While there's no way to predict when a cold sore will strike, there is a way to shorten its stay. Here at Silverlake Smiles, Dr. Juliet Ebrahimian and our team can make quick work of cold sores with our advanced laser dentistry.

Where do cold sores come from?

A cold sore doesn't really strike out of the blue, as the virus has likely been lurking in your body for years. Cold sores are most often the result of oral herpes, or herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). The genital version of herpes stems from HSV-2, which can also lead to cold sores around the mouth.

Anywhere from 50% to 80% of Americans have HSV-1, and they often contract the virus in childhood. About 1 in 8 people in the United States between the ages of 14 and 49 has HSV-2.

In some cases, people can have these infections yet never have an outbreak while others have frequent outbreaks. In a majority of cases, people experience sporadic outbreaks that often present as cold sores.

No matter where you fall on the frequency spectrum, once can be too much for dealing with a mouth sore, which, by the way, makes you highly contagious.

So, if you’d rather people didn’t shy away from you because of a mouth sore, it’s best to find a way to make the issue go away as quickly as possible, and our laser technology certainly checks that box.

Making quick work of cold sores with laser technology

Cold sores have a way of making themselves known long before they become a blister and then crust over. Before something even appears, you might feel a burning sensation in the corner of your mouth, which is the hallmark of a brewing cold sore.

The moment you feel a cold sore developing, come see us for a quick, 10-minute laser treatment. This light technology can stop the cold sore in its tracks and put it on the path to recovery.

To back up our own successful experiences, one study that compared laser treatments to acyclovir cream for treating cold sores concluded that laser therapy, “...reduced the length of recovery time and pain severity faster.” 

So, if you don’t want to waste time with creams or you're not in a position to let the cold sore run its course, a laser treatment is often the best solution.

To schedule your quick-and-easy laser treatment for your cold sore, please contact our Los Angeles office. We serve the Silver Lake neighborhood and areas of Los Feliz, Atwater Village, Frogtown, and Echo Park.