Keeping dry lips soft and smooth may seem like a constant battle. Here are a few things that you should not do to keep your lips healthy.
1. Dehydration
Drink eight glasses of water per day to keep your lips and body hydrated. Dehydration will dry out lips and make them chapped. Sometimes, it is not easy to stick to eight glasses a day. You could keep a water bottle at your desk so that you are always ready to drink.
Staying hydrated and drinking water is a way to keep chapped lips away.
2. Lick your lips
A lot of people who have chapped lips are lip-lickers. It might feel better momentarily, but you are actually harming your lips. Repeated licking can take out the oily surface film that protects the lips from the skin. It makes you lose the moisture from the skin and leads to lips cracking.
3. Pick or bite your lips
It can be tempting to pull off an annoying flake from already-chapped lips but people who frequently bite or pick at their lips may cause further irritation. The behavior leads you to soothe the lips by touching or licking your lips. The never ending cycle of dry, chapped, pick and lick makes your lips hard to heal.
4. Breathing through your mouth
Because your lips are already prone to dryness, open mouth breathing while sleeping eliminates moisture and leads to chapped lips even worse. It is a tendency for mouth breathers to lick their lips frequently.
5. Irritating ingredients
Use irritating lip balm will make your chapped lips worse while it is struggling to heal. Some ingredients can irritate dry lips that you would like to avoid while your lips are chapped.
- Camphor
- Eucalyptus
- Fragrance
- Lanolin
- Menthol
- Phenol
- Octinoxate or oxybenzone
- Salicylic acid
- Propyl gallate
American Academy of Dermatology Association suggests that the following ingredients in your lips balm can help lips heal.
- Castor seed oil
- Shea butter
- Ceramides
- Dimethicone
- Hemp seed oil
- Mineral oil
- Petrolatum
- White petroleum jelly
- Sun-protective ingredients, such as titanium oxide or zinc oxide
5 Things You Should Avoid to Keep Your Lips Soft and Smooth
To recap, keeping your lips soft and smooth can be a struggle. Here are some things to avoid in order to keep your lips healthy.
- Stay hydrated by drinking eight glasses of water per day to prevent dehydration and chapped lips.
- Avoid licking your lips as it removes the natural oils and leads to moisture loss and cracking.
- Refrain from biting or picking at your lips to prevent further irritation and promote healing.
- Breathing through your mouth while sleeping can worsen chapped lips due to moisture loss and increased licking.
- Avoid using lip balms with irritating ingredients such as camphor, eucalyptus, and fragrance, and opt for healing ingredients like shea butter, ceramides, and mineral oil.
Lavender Backyard Garden is a New Zealand herb farm. We grow lavender, rosemary and use steam distillation to produce our own brand of essential oils. Our lavender lip balm is one of our all-time favourite in our shop. It contains natural oils with shea butter which makes your lips feel soft with pleasant lavender scents. If you would like to learn more about our farm click here to discover our farm.
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