Herpes Coffee
I have been drinking coffee since I was sixteen years old. I don’t remember my first cup, but I do know that I have not missed a single day in over twenty years (almost as long as I’ve had herpes!). I’ve been worried about how much coffee I drink but as my hairdresser says, “If it were not for coffee I would have no reason to get out of bed”, and I have to agree with her. I cannot understand people who, at 11:00am, look at their watch and proclaim, “Wow, I haven’t even had a coffee yet today!”.
I cannot function until I’ve had my first jolt and it is by far the very first thing I do every morning.
The bottom line: I’ve come to a bad place in my relationship with vaginal herpes (let’s just say that if we were a couple, we’d be in serious marital counseling) in that I cannot seem to break the cycle of herpes outbreaks. I was ready to call my Doctor for a 3 month supply of Valtrex but a) he’s closed for the holidays and b) I remembered that I don’t really want to rely on Valtrex as a solution for my genital herpes outbreaks. Please don’t misunderstand. I am all for the antiviral medications and hugely suggest anyone take them if they are in a bad place with herpes, but I do believe that herpes is a message from our bodies and I am 98% committed to hearing that message. (The remaining 2% being: Screw this &*#$& herpes outbreak and pass me the Valtrex..)
Herpes Outbreaks and Coffee:
Without boring you with all the medical information, coffee has a tremendous amount of caffeine which sends a message to your adrenal glands to release adrenaline. This adrenaline puts us in a constant state of, “fight or flight” response (which is great when we are being attacked in a dark alley, but not so great when sitting at our desks posting blog entries..), until we crash and reach for something to give us another boost. For me it’s coffee in the morning and then black tea (with milk and sugar!) in the afternoon.
And now I’m worried that among other things (like anxiety, weight gain, and massive irritability) this cycle of adrenal induced exhaustion is sapping my immune system and causing me to have chronic herpes outbreaks. And for the love of God, it’s Christmas (enough with the “gifts”!) So here and now you’ve heard it here first: I’ve quit drinking coffee.
Pray for me.
Please e-mail me if you have had any experience with herpes and coffee.
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Interesting. I have had herpes for a while now (about 15 years) and have been fairly ok with outbreaks. I think on average every 8-10 months or so. Lately though, got this office job and the coffee is plentiful there. I drink several cups everyday, and since I started a year ago, been getting a lot more ob action. About every 2 months now.
Thing is, I drink a bit on weekends also but still never had the problem until the coffee consumption. I just thought about it now and googled this webpage. I’m going to quit the coffee and get back in a few months.
i cannot drink coffee anymore since i contacted genital herpes 20 years ago. it is something in the oil of the coffee bean, and in all beans, and nuts. it’s high in arginine, which the herpes virus feeds off of. i would stay the hell away from coffee, chocolate, nuts, brown rice, anything high in arginine. coffee is known to stimulate the herpes virus. try green tea. much gentler. i was researching on the web about genital herpes and one came up where a woman told people to drink coffee to ease the outbreak. i was enraged! coffee is one of the top, text book things to avoid, along with nuts and seeds and beans for anyone dealing with herpes virus. good luck.
This is an interesting discussion. I have had genital herpes for over 30 years and was a sometime coffee drinker, but mostly tea. In the past year or so I’ve found that almost immediately after drinking coffee I’ll have an outbreak. This has happened enough time for me to make a direct link between the two since nothing else had changed in my diet. I do eat nuts and seeds and beans regularly as I’ve become a vegetarian in the past 6 months due to having had breast cancer. None of these seem to affect my herpes. Sadly, I’ve just found some new information about coffee possibly being able to stop hormone receptor-negative cancer, which is exactly the kind I have had!! So I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place. Do I go back to coffee and the dreaded herpes outbreaks and hope the new research on coffee means I’ll be lowering my chances of a recurrence of the breast cancer?? Life is certainly challenging!
I quit when I was diagnosed just over a year ago because my o.b. was awful and I was going to do whatever I could to avoid them. I went a year with only having maybe 5 cups of coffee. I was recently on holidays and too many late nights had me pick the habit back up and since being back at work I’m easily 2 cups a day. Welcome back outbreaks. Definitely a trigger for me…now I’m trying to decide what’s worse – the outbreak or the massive headache from no caffeine! ;-)
Oh hell yes. I’ve had herpes for over 20 years and a definite trigger is coffee and also chocolate. Tea is fine, but coffee is a disaster. Not only does it make my skin look like shit in general, but it triggers massive outbreaks. Last week I drank strong coffee on three days (decaf on two, but the caffeine is not the trigger, so don’t think decaf is OK) and ALSO I ate some 75% cocoa chocolate (very dark) every day.
Holy frijoles, I am having a TERRIBLE outbreak now. I had one on the side of my nose that I am still recovering from, and while still scabby from that, I just started blistering up above my lip. My whole face is tingling and my right eye is sore. I am petrified of involvement of my eye and going freaking BLIND from getting herpes on my cornea. I am popping 1000mg of L-lysine every few hours in desperation (it is the oppisite of arginine and helps counteract it). I was taking acyclovir, but it seems to do nothing at all, it’s expensive, and I’m pretty much done with it. I just need to avoid coffee, super dark chocolate, and take my lysine every day. Out of those three things, coffee is by far the worst trigger. I have literally never had an outbreak where I haven’t been drinking coffee beforehand, and if I don’t drink it at all I can go years without one.
I contracted Herpes about 2 years ago and had terrible outbreaks. I didnt want to go down the medical path and wanted to stay as health as possible and I always think there is always a natural cure for a natural disease.
I stumbled upon Liquid Olive leaf extract made by Comvita.
The results were amazing as soon as I took it the breakouts just became slight rashes not the big sores I was getting 2-3 times a month. I get outbreaks 3-4 time a year now.
Also other problems such as thrush and other fungal problems were gone too.
I took triple the stated dose and found this to be of best benefit.
I now only take it if I feel the itching and it stops it dead in its tracks, hopefully in a few years it will be dormant for good.
Good luck, it is a horrible disease that’s always in the back of your mind.
This is strange as I find I am the complete opposite to everyone. I got genital herpes last year and was left painful all the time by the outbreaks, but as many of you sufferers know, it doesn’t just affect the genitals, I find it very hard to walk (this is because the virus lives in the back and when an outbreak occurs it travels down the spine and to the legs). In my experience, coffee is the only way I can be free of this symptom and do not have trouble when I have had my morning coffee. I will add though that I do not have sugar with coffee and maybe increased outbreaks are related to the amount of sugar? I am drinking more and more iced black coffee and I feel like a new person.