Cold sores are oral herpes

Is my cold sore contagious? First of all, what you are referring to as a cold sore is actually oral herpes which you can transmit it to another person, orally as well as genitally. Lots of people carry this virus, but prefer to call it a "coldsore" because it doesn't "sound" as scary. A coldsore is ORAL HERPES. That's the bottom line.

Usually if a person gets an outbreak of any amount of severity, it's usually their "first outbreak" which is sort of God's way of sayin' "Hello!!, you now have to become a responsible sex partner.

The morally correct thing to do in any relationship is to be honest and you must "tell" a prospective mate, before you engage in sexual activity that you do have the herpes virus in your system. Telling another person about something so personal can be very difficult for many, especially for those who are newly diagnosed. I have discovered that more people tend to "fear" genital herpes, needlessly I might add, because that equates to an STD and we were always taught to fear STD's, but it truly is not a life threatening situation.

The main reason that you need to prepare or advise someone that they could be at risk is due to something called asymptomatic shedding. Now you say, what the heck is shedding? I'm glad you asked.

Shedding: an excerpt from a website: "This is called
asymptomatic or subclinical shedding of the virus; giving off
the virus from the body with no apparent symptoms. The more
sensitive our virus detection methods become, the more
subclinical viral shedding we can identify. The exact frequency
of subclinical shedding is not known. We do know that up to
70% of new cases of herpes are transmitted from someone showing
no apparent symptoms at the time they infected their partner.
Research has shown that subclinical shedding occurs more
frequently during the first year of having herpes than it
does subsequently. This information may present difficult
emotional concerns about sexuality, and,unfortunately, there
are no guarantees for fail-safe methods of dealing with this
thorny issue. It is probably true that many people who have
herpes do have symptomatic episodes when they give off virus
but do not recognize them as herpes symptoms.

Check here for a great online herpes handbook to read for more valuable information.