It never fails. Every time you have a big meeting coming up or an important presentation to give, you develop an unsightly cold sore on your lip. You wake up with a small cluster of tiny, harmless- looking, white blisters, which quickly explode into a painful sore the size of Rhode Island (OK, so maybe it just looks that big to you).

“True cold sores, the ones that occur on the lips, are caused by the herpes simplex virus I,” says Evan T. Bell, M.D., a specialist in infectious diseases at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. “Herpes viruses presumably lie dormant in certain nerve cells of the body lifelong, until something like stress, strain, a cold, or excessive exposure to the sun causes them to manifest. In the case of herpes simplex virus I, it happens to be on the lip,” he explains. The sores last from 7 to 14 days.

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