Cooler Dryer Weather brings Dry Skin and Chapped Lips.

The weather has definitely turned now that it is November and personally, I've noticed dryer skin and my lips are chapped, but I am also seeing this on my clients and hearing their complaints. Winter weather is hard on all of our skin, including our lips. This is the time of year that many have to change their moisturizer and start using a lip balm.


If you lips are chapped due to the weather, they will improve when you moisturize them with a simple, but high quality lip balm. Unless you are a big time lip licker, or constantly out in harsh weather, your lips should respond to lip balm. If your lips don't heal with consistent use of a good lip balm, you could be allergic to a food or to your lip care products; find the allergen and heal your lips!

I see a lot of clients with chapped lips this time of year, therefore, I have added a Rejuvenating Eye and Lip Treatment to my services as an add-on to facials. If your lips are chapped to a possible allergen, your lips will not heal when using certain lip balms, therefore, once you have found the allergen and start to treat your lips, it can take a week or more to heal. If you think that your lips are chapped due to an allergic reaction, try avoiding the allergens listed below to see if anything changes.

1. Citrus: This includes the twist of lemon in your beverage, drinking orange juice, eating an orange etc. Use a barrier, a straw, and wash your lips soon after the exposure, if this is your allergen.
2. Mint: Mint is in many products including gum, breath mints, dental products, etc.
3. Cinnamon: Cinnamon products are less common, but they are in some dental products, teas, and beverages.
4. Lip Balms: Many healing lip balms designed to treat chapped lips actually contain well intended allergens that you can be allergic to. The common lip product allergen ingredients include Vitamin E (tocopherol), rosemary, eucalyptus, min, lanolin, non mineral sunscreen ingredients, as well as the fragrance and flavors in the lip product.

If your lips are chapped due to an allergy, they become chapped within a few days after exposure to the allergen, and can take a week or more to heal. Try to help them heal with a low allergen product such as Ceralip, L'Occitane, or plain vasaline. When your lips have healed, retest just one of the allergens. If your dry lips reoccur, you have your answer.

Once interesting historical fact that I discovered during this research, is that ChapStick is the oldest lip balm out there. It dates back to the 1880's by Dr. Charles Browne Fleet, who is a pharmacist and inventor of laxatives also. His company is C.B. Fleet and still operates products laxatives, douches, enemas, and other products of sort.