When you hear the word “herpes,” your first impression might be of something scary or embarrassing. However, herpes is just one of the many viruses that can infect the human body. These viruses don’t usually cause any illness, but they can sometimes give you cold sores on your face or full-blown outbreaks of blisters all over your body.
Oral Herpes Symptoms
Herpes symptoms usually appear between 6 to 72 hours after a typical outbreak, though some people have herpes for much longer before they experience any symptoms. While some people have constant, painful recurrences for herpes for their entire life (known as recurrent herpes), others get less severe flare-ups that last only a few days each time they have them.
Here are some of the symptoms of oral herpes you might want to look out for:
- Redness, swelling, heat, pain, or itching in your mouth or parts of your face.
- Highly contagious fluid-filled blisters on the lips or under the nose.
- Development of sores.
What Does Herpes Look Like?
Blisters are most common on the lips or mouth in oral herpes. They can also appear elsewhere on the body, particularly around the chin or below the nose, or on the tongue. Initially, these bumps or pimples develop into pus-filled blisters before healing. Following a burst, a clear or yellow liquid will drain from the blister. A yellow crust forms and heals that area after a few days. A person with oral herpes may have swollen lymph nodes in the neck during an outbreak.