First Sign of Herpes

Everyone who is sexually active needs to be able to spot the first sign of herpes in themselves and in anyone they’re being intimate with, or planning on being intimate with.  You can save yourself a lot of unpleasantness and heartache down the road by keeping yourself free from herpes infection.  And if you’ve already got it, you can significantly reduce the severity and frequency of outbreaks by spotting it early, because rapid treatment during the first sign of herpes is the most effective.  Once it progresses, past the initial stage,  the treatments don’t work as well.

What trips many people up is that they aren’t aware of what to look for when it comes to herpes.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say they don’t know what to look for in the initial stages of herpes.  Most people think that blistering, sensitive skin, painful urination, and vaginal discharge are the initial symptoms of herpes.  But that is not correct.  Those occur during the second stage of herpes, not the first.  And if you’re only on the watch for these symptoms, you can easily miss spotting an outbreak of herpes when it first happens.

So what is the first sign of herpes?  It’s some amount redness in the skin on or around the genital area, accompanies by different degrees of sensitivity.  This is what makes spotting herpes early on so difficult, because in this stage, the symptoms are so mild that some people don’t even notice them, and many that do simply ignore them as just a little tenderness.  That’s not the case with every person – some people will notice a bright redness and the area will be quite painful to the touch.  But in many cases, it’s very mild.  But if you see any redness or notice any sensitivity in your genital area, or your partner’s, you are very likely looking at a herpes infection.  Play it safe, and deal with it right away.