For a few months of the year, many may struggle with the annoying, painful condition known as “chapped lips”. Your lips are dry, cracked, and they peel, which can often cause bleeding. Whether it’s the weather or bad lip balm causing this condition, everyone can agree it’s something you want to treat as soon as possible.
But before we discuss how to treat chapped lips, how can you prevent the condition in the first place?
Preventing Dry Lips
Because your lips don’t contain oil glands, like other parts of your skin, it’s easy for your lips to dry out. This is prone to developing painful chapped lips. Thankfully, however, there are many ways to prevent your lips from drying out too much.
For example, don’t lick your lips. Saliva evaporates quickly, which will only make your lips dry out more. While out in the cold air, cover your mouth with a scarf. Stay away from flavored lip balms. They only lead to dry, cracked lips. Finally, be sure to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration, which could always cause dry skin and lips.
But just in case you have chapped lips already, follow these simple, easy-to-learn steps to quickly treat the painful condition.
Make Your Own Lip Balm
Instead of buying your own non-organic lip balm, you can easily make your own remedy right at home. All you need are three ingredients: organic honey, olive oil, and cocoa butter.
Mix the ingredients to form a fine paste. Then, apply the paste to your lips right before you head to bed. You will wake up to the softest lips you’ve ever seen.
Throw Out Your Matte Lipsticks
While matte lipsticks are expensive, they’re not worth the damage to your lips. They make your lips dry, increasing the risk of chapped lips.
Save the trouble and throw out your matte lipsticks. Instead, we recommend using a moisturizing lip balm and a smoothing lip scrub, like Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment, to protect your dry lips.
Use A Humidifier
Dry air causes dry lips, especially the dry air present in your home. Luckily, there are many ways to make your house more humid during the cold winter months.
This includes buying indoor plants, leaving a bowl of water on the windowsill, leaving the bathroom door open while taking a shower, or you could buy a humidifier. Keep your home humid so your lips stay as soft as ever.
Exfoliate Your Lips
It can be tempting to peel away the chapped skin off your lips. However, be careful about doing this. If you peel away skin that isn’t completely dead, your lips will bleed and cause severe pain.
To help treat this, apply a gentle exfoliator, like a sugar scrub, to your lips to help them stay healthy. Make sure the base is made of oil (shea or coconut oil, for example), and a natural sugar is used as the exfoliant.
Watch For Infections
Chapped lips should heal on their own, but it’s easy for bacteria to enter through the cracks. This could cause a severe infection. These infections must be treated by a doctor. If your chapped lips won’t heal after a long period of time, we recommend visiting your doctor.