A cure for your throbbing lips... (Boots Advanced Electronic Cold Sore Treatment)

Member Name: Sarccyslayer

Product:	Boots Advanced Electronic Cold Sore Treatment
Date:	29/06/09 (777 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: it works, its a miracle... an easy to use cold sore zapper

Disadvantages: It is bigger than a tube of cream and is £34.99

I have suffered from cold sores most of my adult life, both my Dad and I are sufferers and for me I tend to get them when I have got or just had a cold or when I am quite stressed and around five months back I noticed that my top lip had become itchy. Whenever I get a cold sore it is always around the same place, never on my bottom lip, usually on the top right hand side, right where someone can and usually notice them. I usually carry round a tube of Zovirax and some compeed patches which over the last year have become my saviour, but like with most things you soon become immune to their effects and they eventually become less effective or you don't get to the itching in time to prevent the cold sore appearing on your lip. So I went to Boots for some advice, I got sick and tired of feeling a bit like a leper and wanted some advice as to whether there was anything I could do to prevent them or whether there had been any new treatments on the market which I was yet to try, products such as Blistex and Cymex have never worked for me and I was rapidly losing faith in Zovirax. Then I was introduced to Boots Electronic cold sore Treatment!

For anyone who has never so much as suffered from cold sores, you have no idea how lucky you are. cold sores are caused by the Herpes Simplex virus which is also known as the HSV-1 Virus and around 20% of the population suffer from it. The virus itself can only be transmitted by close personal contact such as kissing someone who is prone to the virus and for those of us who are prone to it they are usually triggered by a weakening of the body's defences such as a cold or things such as the weather, stress, fatigue, menstruation to name but a few.

One of the first symptoms for when whenever I am to get a cold sores is a rather unpleasant itching sensation on the lips, it tingles for a few hours and then becomes quite itchy and it is at this stage you really need to have some medication on hand to deal with the cold sore, before it breaks because it is possible to prevent the breakout altogether. However, if it is left to develop, the cold sore will break out into what are best described as fluid filled whitish blisters or what look like a small cluster of blisters which are usually accompanied by redness and swelling to the affected area of the lip. Then after a couple of days for me the swelling begins to go down but as it does, the blisters then turn into a very unattractive weeping crust which scabs over but thankfully never leaves a scar, the temptation to pick it however does sometimes become too much or it can crack if it happens to be on a part of your lip which you use quite a lot. The whole horrid process usually lasts between 7 to 10 days and it can often be longer before any hint or sign of having a cold sore has totally disappeared.

So with all of that in mind, you can probably imagine why I was so desperate to find another treatment which would work much quicker and much more effectively than the treatments I had now become immune too.

Boots Electronic cold sore Treatment is a Boots Branded item and can only be bought from Boots stores or on-line from Boots and although you do not need a prescription to purchase one there is a hefty price tag of £34.99 to pay. The box itself is nothing exciting to look it is a silvery colour and there is an illustration of a face with a red circle on the lips. I found it located next to the other cold sore products and it claims to "Treat cold sores quickly and cleanly" and "work faster than cold sore creams" which already had me sold before I even read how to use the contraption. Opening the box you will find the device along with a 9v battery and a detailed information and instruction leaflet which I would advise anyone to read before even attempting to use it.

The device itself, well unlike a tube of cream, this contraption is made from white plastic and is rectangular in shape, in fact to look at, it reminds me of an Ipod shuffle but on a slightly larger scale. It has one button and an LED light and is slightly curved at one end to fit snugly over the mouth. It also takes one square 9v battery which was straightforward to insert and it comes with a 2 year warranty.

So how does it work? Well the instructions say to use the Electronic cold sore Treatment at the tingling stage of a cold sore appearing and then again 12 hours later, or for more persistent cold sores, it can be used twice a day for three days. They do say though that the treatment can be carried out more frequently without any adverse effect, so the instructions are quite ambiguous in this respect but it is really up to how often you feel you should be using it and how effective it is for you as a person with your cold sores. The science behind it is explained as working by "using an invisible, narrow waveband of light to enhance the local immune response to the cold sore virus. The light treatment reduces the duration of the attack and speeds up the healing time" which makes the whole cold sore sound much worse than it is but I was eager to give it a try.

So to use, the instruction state to place the device over the affected part of the mouth and press the start button. The device will then beep once and the green LED will begin to flash and if you look down at the device itself you can see the green light flashing quite clearly. After the allotted time of three minutes the device will then beep twice to signal the end of the treatment and then the device switches itself off ready to be used next time. Whenever I have finished using the device I always, without fail use an antiseptic wipe to clean it and because I am quite odd I always wipe it clean before I use it, just to make sure that it is totally clean and that no one else has used it.

I bought this product about 5 months ago now and since doing so I have only used it twice! Now that in itself is brilliant value for money even though it might not initially sound like it is. I get cold sores quite regularly as I have already mentioned and it does cost quite a considerable amount of money to treat them and can sometimes be as much as £10 for the use of Zovirax and/or the Compeed strips and I usually buy both just incase I run out of one or the other and spending that amount does sound add up. The first time I used it I was expecting to feel some sort of shock to my lip as the waveband of light touched it, but actually you don't feel anything whatsoever, you are literally just sat there holding this piece of plastic to your mouth and trying not to look really daft, which is actually how I felt. After using it for the first time and doing as I was told to and do it whilst my lip was tingling, I felt the pain go away along with the constant need to touch my lip and itch where the cold sore begins to appear. So feeling good that something new looked intent on working, I followed the rest of the instructions and over the next few days I used it once a day before going to bed and within just a few days there was a remarkable improvement, okay it hadn't gone completely but then this device never actually promised to do that, I just noticed that the fluid filled blister decreased in size quite dramatically and no scab ever formed, I was just left with a smaller looking blister and a slightly less red affected area around it. No throbbing, no itching and no pain.

Then only a month later after a really bad heavy head cold, I felt the tingling sensation that I was used to getting when a cold sore was on its way and luckily I was off work for the day and was able to use my little zapping device immediately and not only was the pain relief was immediate, I used it three times a day for three days running and the cold sore never fully developed past the small blistering stage and it just seemed to go down rather than weep or dry out and form scabs. It wasn't painful at all and my lip did not swell at all. In just a week my lip was completely back to normal, but even during that week my cold sore really wasn't noticeable. Since that moment in time four months ago I have not seen or felt another cold sore upon my lips * touch wood * and this is one of the longest times I have ever gone without having to buy anything whatsoever to deal with a cold sore for the last ten years or more and for me that is enough to make me want to write this review. I am not saying it will work for everyone but it did work for me.

As for the downsides, well unlike a tube of cold sore cream which is quite small in size, this device isn't as easy to conceal in your handbag, should you wish to carry it around with you. I only have it with me if I feel the tingling sensation or if after a cold suspect I will feel the start of a cold sore and for me that is the only slightly downside to it and that in itself is nothing too major which would warrant a loss of the stars I have given it.

I think for people like me who suffer from cold sores and know how painful and inconvenient they are not to mention how they make you feel will hopefully benefit from using this device because for me it improved both the pain and the appearance of the cold sore and for that reason alone I believe it is well worth every penny but for those people who don't get cold sores I don't think it would be a worthwhile purchase. I am glad to have found this device, it is my saviour and I now don't get too stressed out when I feel the tingling sensation, instead I relax and reach for my zapper to control the breakout and rid my lips of the cold sore.

Summary: Boots Cold Sore Treatment which zaps away the pain quickly