Product Rec: Albothyl (알보칠) oral solution for cold sores, canker sores in Korea

Wanted to to a quick recommendation for a particular product you can pick up in most pharmacies here in South Korea over-the-counter (OTC) that works well for large and painful cold sores or canker sores. 

It's a liquid solution called Albothyl (알보칠). 

It's been awhile since I made a product recommendation here on this blog. You may recall the last thing I recommended was an all-natural groin cleanser. Seriously. Well, I found myself having another unpleasant issue. This time I got an extremely large cold sore in my mouth down below my lip. On top of that, while enjoying a delicious bite of noodles, I also somehow managed to bite down hard right on top of it. Needless to say, I was in a lot of pain and the next day I could barely eat anything, every stimulation of it would cause pain. 

It looked disgustingly similar to this:

Most lip/cheek sores are just commonly called 입병 in Korean. Image: Health Chosun

"Touch-med ointment" (터치메드 연고) 

So I did what I always do and went by the local pharmacy to pick something up. I asked the pharmacist for some 입병 약 ("eebyung yak") and he originally gave me something called "Touch-med ointment" (터치메드 연고). 

Touch-med ointment. Image: Dongwha

This was just a kind of gel in a tube that, when applied to the mouth ulcer, seemed to mix with my spit to form a kind of paste layer to protect it. There was also a mild numbing action going. This cost about 5,000 won. 

It wasn't terrible, but I didn't like it. The paste became gooey during the day and I felt like it was spreading around my lips, leaving a trail of slime behind that made it difficult to focus on anything else. I started feeling like just putting nothing on would have been better than using this. On the plus side, there was no pain involved in using this product at all. So if you're sensitive, something like this, or whatever similar drug your pharmacist gives you, could be fine.

Albothyl (알보칠) 

But I knew I needed something different and ideally something stronger. So that's when I looked to the wisdom of my coworkers, and two of them both had the same answer ready to go, as if it was completely obvious that this is what I ought to use and how could I be so stupid as to not know about this. They were shocked that I hadn't used it before, because "doesn't it come from Germany? So foreigners should know it." Yes, because all Americans ought to be intimately aware of European medicines I guess.  

So on their advice, I went to the pharmacy (a different pharmacy, out of pure shame) and asked specifically for Albothyl 알보칠 and came home with this bottle:

Image: Pharmacology Information Center

As I've implied, I never heard of this before, but it apparently is in fact pretty well known around the world I guess. It's on Wikipedia under its chemical name:

Policresulen - Wikipedia

And specifically listed for

1. Vaginal bacterial infection
2. Stomatitis and gingivitis

Well, one of those was certainly my problem. So I gave it a try. You use it by dipping a cotton swab into the bottle and then applying it to the cold sore. You can press the soaked cotton swab onto it, but I found it better to just squeeze the swab to get all that good red liquid drenching right into the cold sore area.

Now I'm not going to lie to you. This hurt. It definitely has some bite to it. A burning sensation came, but one of those "you know it's working" type feelings. I didn't scream or cry or anything. It wasn't as painful as my coworkers assured me it would be. But it wasn't pleasant either. 

But after a minute or two, the sensation goes away and it becomes more numbed. And then the interesting part starts happening. This stuff would make a kind of very thin film over the infected area. The film didn't feel slimy or gooey at all. Almost like a dissolving piece of paper laid over the wound. And it actually worked pretty well. It felt like a very thin barrier which helped me to be able to eat other foods and drinks without irritating the cold sore more than necessary. 

And I could apply it in the morning and again at bedtime, and that application was generally good to go for the rest of the day. 

It still took about a week for the sucker to finally heal up, but in the meantime, life was improved greatly and I think it also helped with the healing too. There were times in the morning I'd wake up and manually remove the "film" but even pealing that off didn't hurt and didn't seem to irritate the sore. I'd just reapply a fresh coat and be on my way. 

Needless to say, I'm a fan, and keep the bottle in my medicine cabinet. I paid around 12,000원 for the bottle but it was worth it, and I still have about 75% of the bottle left. You can apparently pick it up at the convenience store too at a cheaper price (smaller bottle maybe?)

So don't suffer more than you have to. Dab it on, feel the burn, then go about your day. This magic red liquid gets the Sam seal of approval.