Healthy Lips
Chapped lips improve when you use a high quality lip balm If yours don’t, you could be allergic to a food or your lip care products; find the allergen and heal your lips!
I see a lot of patients with chapped lips. They try numerous chapped lip remedies without improvement. When both the top and bottom lips are chapped I suspect an allergy. Unless you’re a big time lip licker, or out in harsh weather (think fishermen and skiers), your lips should respond to lip balm.
In my practice the most common lip allergens are: 1. Citrus, 2. Mint, 3. Cinnamon, 4. Lip care products.
1. Citrus: the twist of lemon in your beverage, orange juice, eating an orange etc. I get chapped lips every time I have lemon in my water or a Margareta.
2. Mint: including gum, breath mints, dental products. One patient had chapped lips from mint tea.
3. Cinnamon: this is usually from dental products, teas and beverages that contain cinnamon. For one patient it was Good Earth’s Original Flavor herb tea with loads of cinnamon.
4. Lip balms : products intended to heal chapped lips can contain 'healing' allergens that make chapped lips worse. Common allergen ingredients include vitamin E (tocopherol), rosemary, eucalyptus, mint, lanolin, non mineral sunscreen ingredients as well as fragrance and flavors in lip sticks.
If your chapped lips are due to an allergy, they become chapped the day after exposure and take a week or more to heal. Try avoiding the allergens above for a month and moisturize your lips with a simple, low allergen product. My favorite is Ceralip. Other options include pure shea butter. You can also try plain Vaseline, but it’s irritating to some people.
Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronsho/600105612/
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