“What can I do about severely chapped lips?” Plus a gift from COVID

What can I do about severely chapped lips? Are there any good lip products?

Although it is a common problem, chapped lips can become a thing of the past. What does it take? Diligence and consistent use of proper lip products. And in the case of severely chapped lips, a vacation from lipstick—a product that probably caused much of the chapping in the first place.

One reason I don’t have chapped lips: I don’t wear lipstick. I haven’t for over 20 years, and when I did wear it, my lips were invariably chapped—if not always, then often. I am not advocating giving up lipstick altogether, but I am recommending becoming aware that lipstick could very well be a main culprit in your chapped lips conundrum. If you don’t want chapped lips, you must be prepared to treat your lips—especially if you are a lipstick wearer.

Non-petroleum lip balms are the products that I recommend most for chapped lips. The downside is they don't add color to your lips; tinted lip balms do, but they don't have the coverage like a true lipstick. However there are some products on the market that can give you moisturizing abilities in a regular lipstick.

I have a client who has always had very dry, cracked lips. Aside from lipstick use, there doesn’t seem to be a clear and definite reason for this severe condition. Because of her lip concerns, she has tried every lipstick and lip product known to womankind. I have seen an improvement in her lips since she started consistently using one of the newer moisturizing lipsticks.

Try one of these moisturizing lipstick products and see if it helps with your dry, cracked lips. I recommend finding a moisturizing lipstick with SPF 15 (at least). You want to protect your lips from the sun—not just your skin. And to treat your cracked lips at night, do use a non-petroleum lip balm.

Now that there is a worldwide pandemic and we are wearing face masks whenever we are in public, which is usually where and why you wear lipstick (in public): take this time as a gift if you have chapped lips and stop wearing lipstick!—for now. You can’t really wear it with a face covering and this break will give your lip tissue a rest from the many times drying effects of lipstick.

For more information, see:

• Kiss Chapped Lips Goodbye!
• More Help for Chapped Lips
• The Ins and Outs of Lipstick

...said your lips!

Chapped Lips: all links so far

chapped lips

• The Ins and Outs of Lipstick

• Kiss Chapped Lips Goodbye!

• Lip exfoliation—really? (upcoming)

• More Help for Chapped Lips

• Tinted lipbalm replaces lipstick

• Toothpaste could be causing your Chapped Lips—really! A client case study

• Use Yonka’s Nutri-Contour to help heal chapped lips (upcoming)

• “What can I do about severely chapped lips?” Plus a gift from COVID (new!)

The Ins and Outs of Lipstick

I’ve always wondered what happens to lipstick when it wears off—does it just evaporate?

In an article I read about lipsticks, it said that on average, women who regularly wear lipstick will consume (that means eat!) over 3 pounds of lipstick during their lifetime! Where do you think your lipstick has gone when you look in the mirror and have to reapply? You may have just had a glass of wine and a good conversation, but you probably also ate your lipstick. And by unconsciously licking your lips throughout the day, you are furthering the ingestion of this product.

The article went on to say (according to the gastroenterologist quoted) that you swallow so little at a time there really isn’t any harm to your body. He stated that the waxes and polymers in lipsticks are nontoxic and are broken down by stomach acids. Well, if the research for this article is correct, and a woman can conceivably consume several pounds of lipstick during her lifetime, I cannot see anything good about ingesting these substances.

Lipstick contains a lot of questionable ingredients that you may want to think twice about before eating day after day. Whether or not the information about how much you actually ingest are 100% true, no doubt large amounts of lipstick go through your body to be digested, so if you can find alternative products that perhaps don’t have as many bad ingredients in them, then I recommend giving these a try.

Many companies make tinted lipbalms

I’ve been looking for a moisturizing lipstick with sunscreen for years, but lipstick dries out my lips and makes them peel.

I recommend having your favorite lipsticks on hand to wear at night if you are going out and a tinted lip balm with SPF for daytime. This way you won’t have to forgo lipstick altogether, yet you can have protecting products on your lips throughout the day. Tinted lip balms may be the best option for you. They won’t give you the coverage of an actual lipstick, but you won’t have to contend with all the chapping you have now. Less color, but less chapping—hopefully this will be a happy compromise for you.

Ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate, by the way, is a sunscreen ingredient commonly used in lip products with SPF. Avobenzone is also used in many products.

Do treatment lipsticks containing anti-aging ingredients such as Kinetin* and vitamin C really work?

*Kinetin is a plant-based “miracle” ingredient that is supposed to help reduce wrinkles.

Are you confusing your actual facial skin with the tissue of your lips? These two different types of tissue don’t age the same way. You cannot use an anti-aging lipstick on your lips and hope to help the wrinkles you may be concerned about above your lips. Using vitamin C on your lips would come under this same umbrella.

My recommendation is to stop looking for one product to solve many problems. Wear lipstick to color your lips. If it contains special ingredients and you find these helpful, great. But I wouldn’t recommend searching for lipsticks that have “all the rage” ingredients in them and paying the high price for these types of products.

If you want to keep your lips from drying and flaking, you may find a lipstick that helps with that specific concern. But I highly recommend wearing a nonpetroleum lip balm whenever you aren’t wearing lipstick, especially at night before bed. This way you will at least give your lips a soothing and healing balm some of the time.

A bit alarmist, but now you understand.

HOT TIP: Lipstick is one of the top offenders in making your lips chapped or keeping them chapped. Try switching to nonpetroleum lip balms whenever possible.

For more information, see:

• Tinted lipbalm replaces lipstick
• Kiss Chapped Lips Goodbye!
• More Help for Chapped Lips 

Tinted lipbalm replaces lipstick

You talked about a light-colored lip balm on a TV news program. Could you please give me information about this product? Where can I get it, and what was the brand name?

I don’t wear any makeup at all, but there are times I would like a little color on my lips. The product you mentioned sounds perfect for me. I have been looking for something like that for a long time.

The items I was showing on TV were tinted non-petroleum lip balms. They are wonderful problem-solvers because they are treating your lips while at the same time giving them some color. The pigments in these colored balms are not as dense as in a real lipstick, so they don’t give you deep color, but they do give you some color.

The actual products I had on the show are made by a company called Un-Petroleum®, although they are not the only company with tinted lip balms on the market. They can be found at most health food stores, and I’ve even seen some at regular grocery stores.

For more information, see:

• Kiss Chapped Lips Goodbye!
• More Help for Chapped Lips
• The Ins and Outs of Lipstick

Toothpaste could be causing your Chapped Lips—really! A client case study

In the past week, I have developed cracks in the corners of my mouth. I looked these symptoms up and have found that this can be a riboflavin deficiency. I take a lot of vitamins every day, so this seems odd to me. The only other cause that I can think of is stress. Up until last week I was under a lot of stress. What do you think the cause is, and how should I treat this?

Symptoms of stress can be anything from looking and feeling tired to more severe problems like the kind my client, Debbie, has described. Many times stress will have a delayed response in the body, so even though the stress may be over (the wedding, the divorce, the new job, the event) the symptoms of a depleted body may keep on coming. It’s as though your body takes the brunt of the stress for a certain period of time, then it crosses over the threshold of tolerance. That is when the symptoms really begin to show.

Cracking at the corners of the mouth is thought to be a riboflavin (vitamin B2) deficiency. The B vitamins are known as the “stress vitamins.” When we are stressed out, vitamin B is easily depleted from our system. Because these vitamins are water-soluble, they are easily destroyed by alcohol, pollution, smoking, and stress, to name just a few causes.

Although Debbie was on the right track for figuring out why she was experiencing cracking at the corners of her mouth, it wasn’t until another six months went by that she discovered the real culprit. After trial and error with vitamins and products put directly on her lips, Debbie returned to her dermatologist who said it could be toothpaste that was causing her troubles. Honestly, when Debbie first told me this I was skeptical, although I had recently read about toothpaste causing reactions like perioral dermatitis, a condition that I didn’t link to Debbie’s.

Debbie called me and said that she didn’t want to jinx the results, but after switching toothpaste, her cracking problems cleared up within three days! Debbie’s problems began in October and it was now April. I asked her if she switched brands anywhere near the time she was getting cracked lips. Due to an important event (the one she was so stressed about in the email), she wanted to have bright, white teeth and started using a special toothpaste made for this right around the time she started having the problems.

You really have to become your own private detective when it comes to figuring out why you have “all of a sudden” developed a skin condition—or a change in anything having to do with your body. I talk a lot about this in regard to sugar and breakouts. Without finding what the offending substance is, whether a food or in Debbie’s case, a product, your problems may persist. If Debbie’s doctor hadn’t suggested this seemingly unrelated product (toothpaste) as being the cause, she would have continued to use it and continued to have skin problems. Or at some point, Debbie might have gone off the toothpaste, and her lip problems would have cleared up, but she might not have connected the two events.

Awareness is the key, along with being able to dissect your life in such a way as to figure out even the most mundane of activities or products used and how they may be affecting your health. I am happy to report Debbie’s cracking problems have completely gone away, and needless to say, she won’t be using teeth whitening toothpaste ever again!

For more information, see:

• Kiss Chapped Lips Goodbye!
• More Help for Chapped Lips 
• Dermatitises (skin inflammations) explained

Kiss Chapped Lips Goodbye!

More Help for Chapped Lips

- See more at: http://agelessbeautyblog.blogspot.com/search/label/chapped%20lips#sthash.m3998u7R.dpuf

More Help for Chapped Lips

Chapped lips are a problem for a lot of people, and as we’re heading into the colder winter months, you do not want to start the season with chapped lips.

If you wear lipstick, you’ll want to use anti-chapping products at night before bed and whenever you aren’t wearing lipstick. If you have severe problems with chapping, try not wearing lipstick for a few days while using healing lip balms. If your chapped lips clear up, your lipstick may be causing the problem. You may want to switch to a more moisturizing type of lipstick. If you will use healing lip products on a regular basis, most of you will find relief from chapping.

For years I used petroleum-based lip balms, and still my lips stayed very chapped and flaky. I switched brands many times, but never found relief. After a friend brought to my attention the large amounts of petroleum contained in these products, I opted for a healthier type of lip care—the non-petroleum variety. Remember, throughout the day you are ingesting (by eating, drinking, and licking off ) anything you put on your lips. It may seem minor, but day after day, year after year, the petroleum and dyes in lipsticks and balms add up to consuming a lot of undesirable elements.

Try switching to non-petroleum lip products, and see if that helps you. Some eye creams are made to be used on the lips as well. Personally, I prefer a balm rather than a cream, but you may fare well using your eye cream as a lip treatment. There are many brands of quality lip care that can be found at most health food stores. This tangerine Whole Foods brand, pictured above, is the one I have used for years. It doesn’t have much of an aroma, something I prefer in a lip balm. It works great, too.

Using an oil on your lips can also be an effective way to relieve chapping. If you have olive oil in your kitchen, pour some in a small container and dab it on your lips whenever you need to. This will go a long way in helping to keep your lips hydrated and free from chapping. I personally don’t like oils; the oil always seeps into my mouth. I’ll continue to use my favorite non-petroleum lip balms and I encourage you to find a favorite of your own.

I always encourage my clients to purchase several balms vs. just one. Then you can put them in different strategic places so wherever you are you’ll have a lip balm handy, and you can kiss the possibility of chapped lips good-bye.

For more information, see:

• Kiss Chapped Lips Goodbye! 
• Toothpaste could be causing your Chapped Lips—really! A client case study
• Tinted lipbalm replaces lipstick
  

Kiss Chapped Lips Goodbye!

Why do lips get chapped in the first place?

The tissue that comprises your lips doesn’t have any oil or sweat glands like the rest of your body does, so the lips can quite easily become chapped. Did you know that simply habitually licking your lips can cause chapping? We may think that the moisture from our saliva will help hydrate our lips, but in actuality it dehydrates them due to moisture evaporation. Licking your lips just makes things worse.

If you are on medication you may experience chapped lips. Medications alter the body’s natural functions and may induce dry skin on the body as well as the lips. For instance, dry, chapped lips are a common occurrence while taking Accutane, an anti-acne drug. Also, if you are on chemotherapy, you have probably discovered that your lips are continually chapped due to the harsh chemicals that are infiltrating your body.

In addition, dry air (like in the desert or Colorado) or the cold air of winter can cause chapping. You may find yourself wetting your lips with your tongue to overcome the dry feeling, and as I’ve already said, licking your lips actually creates dry, chapped lips. Last of all, lipsticks in general have a lot of drying ingredients in them and if you wear lipstick, no doubt you have had chapped lips at one time or another.

Although it is a common problem, chapped lips can become a thing of the past. What does it take? Diligence and consistent use of proper lip products. And in the case of severely chapped lips, a vacation from lipstick—a product that probably caused much of the chapping in the first place.

Using a lip balm is going to be your best and safest bet to stave off chapped lips. I prefer non-petroleum lip balms, which can usually be found at health food stores. Buy several, and then put them everywhere! Typically they are about $3 apiece. So I buy five or six, and spread them out in my home, office, in my jeans, and regularly used jackets, so I don’t have to worry about being without. They last for an eternity since I have so many in use at one time, and my lips are never chapped because I am consistently attending to them.

One last recommendation: don’t bite your lips! Trying to bite off the chapped skin that is sometimes hanging off your lips just causes more problems. It creates tiny tears in the lip tissue, which can bleed and take a long time to heal. Instead of tearing that delicate skin, just slather your lips with a non-petroleum lip balm and stay away from lipstick for at least a few days and let your lips heal. I know it’s hard to leave the lipstick off, but treat your lips as though they are injured, and give them loving care—and lip balm!

Chapped lips no longer need to be a problem. Sometimes you can’t avoid the causes, but you can always contribute to the healing of chapped, dry lips—primarily by using lip balms as often as possible. No matter what you use on your lips, do use something, and you can kiss chapped lips good-bye.

For more information, see:

• More Help for Chapped Lips 
• “What can I do about severely chapped lips?” Plus a gift from COVID
• Chemotherapy & Skin Care