Difference Between Herpes 1 and Herpes 2

Herpes viral infections are unpleasant and inconvenient infections to have at any time or any place. A lot of people get hung up between herpes 1 and herpes 2. When I say they get hung up, they assign unnecessary importance to it because it really has very little effect on the outbreaks that you get, whether your outbreaks are caused by type 1 or type 2. It used to be thought, when we first discovered that there were these different serotypes of the virus 30 or 40 years ago, it used to be thought that herpes type 1 was responsible for facial cold sores and herpes type 2 was responsible for genital herpes. And what we’ve learned over the years is that, as a result of oral intercourse, both viruses are present in both places and cause infections In both places. So the bottom line is, if you get herpes sores on your face, you have oral herpes, and if you get herpes sores on your genitals, you have genital herpes, and it is of very little consequence to you whether it’s being caused by type 1 or type 2 because both are equally contagious, equally annoying, and almost equally recurrent. So it has very little effect on you. What is important is that regardless of which type you have and regardless of which location you have it in, there are effective medications at controlling your outbreaks or helping to reduce your outbreaks. While these medications, likeValtrex and Famvir, don’t keep your herpes from coming back, they do control fairly well the outbreaks so see your doctor for a prescription if you have a problem with outbreaks.