The Gloss on Lips

Separating the Balm from the Bane

  Winter is your lips’ worst enemy- cold, wind, and dry air create chapped, peeling, and dehydrating lips that can easily become a casualty of the season. However, with proper care, your lips will stay hydrated and render chapped lips so last year! The key to healthy lips is proper care. Simply rubbing any balm or ChapStick on your lips may create more of a problem than a solution. Kat James, author of The Truth About Beauty, warns that “phenols in medicated lip balms will dry out the lips. Other ingredients in these lip balms may still form a physical barrier from moisture loss- but they aren’t really moisturizing.” Furthermore, standard lip products contains such high ingredients as petrolatum, which research has shown to cause acne. Petrolatum (and other petroleum derivatives, like mineral oil) may also increase photosensitivity and interfere with your body’s own moisturizing abilities, creating even drier lips than if you had left them alone. If you look further down the ingredient list of some conventional lip blams, you’ll likely find such additives as parabens, which are used to extend the shelf life of beauty products but are generally considered toxic and have also been linked to allergic reactions.   Consider this… you end up easting most of your lip balm. Do you really want to eat petroleum? 

  January 2007, Alternative Medicine. Written by Melissa B. Williams.