What is Herpes? And what's the difference between Herpes 1 and Herpes 2? Dr. Schultz makes sense of it all.
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Dr. Neal Schultz: Hello, I'm Dr. Neal Schultz and welcome to DermTV. Herpes viral infections are unpleasant and inconvenient infections to have at anytime or anyplace. A lot of people get hung-up between herpes I and herpes II. When I say get hung-up, they sign unnecessary importance to it because it really has very little effect on the outbreaks that you get. With your outbreak, of course by type I or type II. It used to be for what when we first discovered that there were these different serotypes of the virus 30 or 40 years ago. It used be thought that herpes type I was responsible for facial cold sores and herpes type II was responsible for genital herpes. 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, or if you have oral herpes and if you get herpes sores on the genitals, your genital herpes and it's a very little consequence to you, although it's been caused by type I or type II because both are equally contagious, equally annoying and almost equally recurrent. So it has a 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 like Valtrex and Famvir don't keep your herpes from coming back, they do control fairly well the outbreaks so see your doctor for prescription, if you have a problem with outbreaks. Please join me again at dermtv.com. If you have a question please send it to me by visiting dermtv.com/question. I'm Dr. Neal Schultz and thank you for watching today.
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