Dry Lips
Lips and Life
Everyone should know that Lips is a major things of Human Beauty. As much as you wear luxurious dresses but without nice looking Lips your beauty will remain in darkness. They help you eat, speak, whistle and kiss, but how well do you know your lips? Do you know they're sensitive and thin-skinned? It's not a slight; it's just a fact of our anatomy.
Our skin is made up of three layers: the epidermis, the dermis and a subcutaneous fat layer. The stratum corneum tops the epidermis as a protective layer (against bacteria, moisture loss, heat and light), but the skin on our lips is much thinner than the skin covering most of our body -- in fact, on our lips this protective layer is four to five times thinner compared than the skin on our face. And because there are no sweat glands or hair follicles on our lips, they don't get the same kind of natural protection that skin on other areas of our body does.
So, treating dry, chapped lips can be tricky. They're vulnerable to the elements, as well as to our own bad habits. Keeping them soft and smooth may seem like a constant battle, but we have 6 tips to help keep your pout pretty and plump.
Avoid The Elements
One strategy for beating dry lips is to avoid common environmental triggers. It might not always be possible for you to stay inside on bright, cold or windy days, but it sure can help. Dry air robs you of any spare moisture you've got, and compared with the rest of your skin, lips are particularly vulnerable. The sun is another key player in the drama -- without a good supply of melanin, lips are especially susceptible to the sun's powerful rays and subsequent sunburns.
Abusive weather's a real bully, so if you do choose to go outside, protect yourself. No need to leave your lips out in the cold. For example, you can wrap a scarf around your face to block the wind or wear a wide-brimmed hat to keep off the sun -- whatever it takes to shield your lips from extreme exposure.
Balms Serious Lips service
What anti-dry lip arsenal would be complete without a lip balm of some sort? Lip balms can bring a smile to even the sorest dry lips; they build a barrier between your lips' mucus membranes and the outside world, helping lock must-have moisture in.
Remember to apply just a thin coat of lip balm -- don't gob it on, because that might tempt you to lick off the excess and we already learned why that was a bad idea. Also, it's important to get a lip balm of at least SPF 15. Lips are very sensitive to the sun, so they need lots of protection from it. Otherwise, chapping can just get worse.
Use the Right Kind of Lips Balm
So, you need balm, but what kind? If you think flavor is the only difference among the many lip care products on the market, you're mistaken. In fact, certain ingredients in some balms might actually be sabotaging your hydrating efforts -- and it's probably not the berry flavoring.
Some popular lip balms contain ingredients such as
phenols or peppermint oil that help exfoliate the chapped flakes of skin from our lips. While these ingredients are great for helping to slough off dry skin, they aren't very good at hydrating. As they encourage exfoliation, they remove the natural oils from the lips, and what happens next? You reach for more lip balm because your lips feel dry, despite the fact that you just used balm. And the cycle begins. You may then think you must be developing a lip balm addiction (it's not an addiction; it really is just a habit). Moisturizing lip balms help battle dry lips because they won't add to the dryness.
Choose the most emollient balm you can find -- look for ingredients such as petrolatum, beeswax, shea butter, cocoa butter, or oils such as almond or jojoba to help lock in moisture and soften and protect lips. For seriously dry lips, look for a balm that contains synthetic ceramides, which are fats that can help restore your lips' natural skin barrier. And for the best protection, choose an oil-based balm that also contains a sunscreen.
Stops Licking your Chops
Licking your lips may seem like an easy way to moisten things up, but it actually does more harm than good. Lips usually lack the protective outer membrane found on most other skin, so adding moisture that easily evaporates seconds later creates a vicious cycle that can dry lips out very quickly.
There's another dark side to lip licking -- saliva, despite its clear, watery appearance, is not akin to pure mountain spring water. Along with teeth, saliva is one of the first mechanisms in the digestive process and it contains enzymes that begin to break up food. Those same enzymes, while so helpful when you want to chow down on a big, juicy burger, unfortunately have a similar effect on the lips: They get a jump-start on digesting them. Biting is no good either, it can damage and weaken tender lips.
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