Generic Valtrex
Valacyclovir 0.5/1g

All About Valtrex

Finding out you have genital herpes can be one of those fantastically terrible moments where you feel your stomach sink down to your feet and the rest of the world crashes in around you. Not only do you have a sexually transmitted disease, but you have genital herpes – one of the STDs that can be treated (thankfully) but does not go away – ever. It is hard to face that reality and a thousand questions pop up at once. Will you find someone who loves you, despite the infection? How did you contract herpes in the first place? Is your sex life effectively over, given that you don’t want to spread the disease to anyone else – let alone to the person you like enough to share sexually intercourse with? There’s good news and bad news regarding those questions.

The first good news is this: yes, someone will probably love you. In fact, a large number of people suffer from genital herpes – as much as 1/5th of the population. That’s probably how you got it, anyway. Plenty of people suffer from the disease but have no idea that the herpes simplex virus is living on the surface of their skin.

After that comes the bad news: yes, you should avoid having intimate relations (and any kind of skin contact) with someone else – at least when you are in the middle of an outbreak. That translates to this: if you have a series of sores around your mouth, don’t lean in for a kiss; if the outbreak is on your genital region, you will simply have to abstain from sex if you wish to protect your partner.

But, from there the news gets good again, because new drugs are helping to ward off genital herpes outbreaks. The active ingredient valacyclovir HCL (which is sold under the more pronounceable name of Valtrex) can actually make you break out less often, making you available for sex more frequently. You still need to be careful; and, you should still use protection when engaging in intercourse. If you choose to have sex without a condom, you are risking passing genital herpes on to your partner and as of now, there is no way to avoid that.

There are side effects. They include nausea, dizziness and symptoms which could be mistaken for a cold, including headaches and sore throats. Most of the time, they are minor and do not seriously impact your life.

Valtrex isn’t a wonder drug or a miracle cure, but it does make you less likely to pass on your sexually transmitted disease to the person that you love. And, it may well be the first step towards a genuine cure that will one day eliminate all fear of infecting others.