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The best way to understand how the virus works is to understand what happens to your body during a herpes outbreak. When you do not have an outbreak, the virus is lying dormant in your system.
This doesn't mean you have been cured. You still have the virus. It just means that the virus is not actively causing symptoms in your body.
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It is still possible to spread to others even if you are outbreak free. Remember the different stages that the virus can go into.
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Herpes Symptoms
The virus lies dormant in your nerve cells, a teeny-tiny organism feeding off your cells but it never dies and never goes away. Also remember that some people may be in the "active" stage with very little to no symptoms at all. You might not have large sores or lesions so you may not realize you are in the active stage and you can still spread the virus to someone else.
Why is it that some people go for years without an outbreak and other people seem to have them often? Why is it you can have the virus without ever having an outbreak? To understand the answers to these questions, you need to understand what happens to your body during an outbreak.
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n HSV1 blisters form on the lips and on the inside of the mouth, and soon develop into painful ulcers. You have probably heard of them called cold sores or fever blisters.
The gums become red and swollen, and the tongue may develop a white coating. Other symptoms may include fever, muscle aches,trouble with eating, a generally ill
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feeling, irritability and swollen neck glands. These symptoms can last from two to three weeks.
After your get the initial infection the virus can lie dormant without causing any symptoms for some time. But the virus can reactivate at a later time, leading to a tingling and numbness around the mouth, then a blister that breaks and forms a crust. The virus tends to activate itself during or just after some type of stress on the body such as a cold, an infection, hormone changes, menstrual periods or even a tooth extraction.
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Genital Herpes
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Symptoms of genital herpes, HSV2 typically begin with pain, tenderness, or itching in the genital area and also include fever and headache
In males, blisters appear on the penis. In females, blisters appear on the area around the vagina and in the cervix. In both, the blisters may appear on the thighs
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and buttocks. Blisters soon erupt to form painful sores that last 1 to 3 weeks.
There are also some other symptoms that may appear such as pain or a burning sensation during urination; a clear mucus-like discharge from the vagina or urethra (opening for urine) in females; a clear mucus-like discharge from the tip of the penis in males; and tender, swollen glands in the groin area.
As with HSV1, after an initial outbreak of genital blisters, HSV2 also remains dormant in nearby nerves and can be reactivated later in life. The symptoms of reactivated genital are similar to those of first outbreak, but they're generally less severe. However, the virus may react differently in different people. Some people have more frequent outbreaks than others and some have more severe outbreaks.
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