The worst thing about having chapped lips is once you have them, it seems to never go away. It becomes a constant habit to constantly lick your lips when you need to moisturize them, and most chapsticks simply relieve your symptoms rather than cure the dryness that causes the problem to begin with. Learn at-home tricks to treating your chapped, irritated dry lips and use chapstick far less often.
The key to not having dry, chapped lips is to learn not to constantly lick or pick at them. Most people with chapped lips have gotten into the problematic habit of always licking their lips to relieve their discomfort, and it’s a hard habit to break. Like biting your nails, it’s a conscious effort to not lick your lips, and one of the best methods is to make licking the lips distasteful while hydrating the lips at the same time. Easier said than done? Nope.
Wear sunscreen on your lips every day. Apply a drop of tea tree oil which will help hydrate the lips and won’t harm you if ingested, but has a poor taste when it comes in contact with your tongue. Since sunscreen and tea tree oil are not tasty on your lips, they will provide much-needed moisturization to your lips and keep your tongue from constantly interfering. Sunscreen provides protection from the sun’s burning rays that cause fine lines and break down collagen in the mouth, and tea tree oil provides healthy oils that regenerate skin and lets the skin cells reproduce new healthy cells all day long.
At night, gently exfoliate your lips with gentle abrasion. Take a soft cloth and rub in a circular motion along your lips to remove the dead skin that is physically unappealing and also irritating. This is the skin that is keeping moisture out of your lips as well, making you reapply chapstick and lip balms all day. After exfoliation, take a cucumber slice and rub it gently along your lips. The moisture and vitamins in the cucumber juice helps put nutrients into your aching skin and the cool slice helps to ease the tightness and gives your lips more elasticity.
Applying Vitamin E oil and Coconut oil to your lips prior to bed is a great way to fill in your cracked lips with cell-renewing nutrients, and will allow your lips to draw in and retain moisture and boost collagen. You will wake up with supple, softer, fuller lips that are more elastic and healthier looking.
Dry lips are a sign of dehydration, so drink more water. Your lips are thin-skinned which is how they get chapped so easily, and dehydration is often to blame. If you drink more water, you are healing your skin all around, boosting collagen renewal for elasticity and resistance to gravity, cell regeneration to replace old, dead cells, and helps your skin all around battle the aging process by being more resilient. Your lips will thank you for every sip of water you take.
Apply a lip balm with bees wax or wear Bag Balm (the classic balm for cracked cow’s utters). Not only do these products work, but without flavor additives they further help to keep you from licking your lips and making your chapped lips worse. So long as you are providing moisture to your lips and adding healthy oils (like sunscreen, every day) to your lips and learning not to lick them, you should be well on your way to healthier, happier lips in just a few days.
