What to know

Is Lip Balm Good For You?

Is Lip Balm Good For You

Do you feel like your lip balm is not working for you? Well your lip balm might actually be the problem.

Chapped lips is a very annoying problem that torments millions around the world. But in efforts to heal them with lip balm isn’t always very successful, and that might be because the lip balm itself is hurting your lips and making them drier and more sensitive.

Lip balm is generally a wax-like substance that is applied topically to lips to moisturize and relieve chapped or dry lips, angular cheilitis, stomatitis, or cold sores. They are often made with beeswax or carnauba wax, camphor, cetyl alcohol, lanolin, paraffin, and petrolatum, among other ingredients. And you can even find some with special flavours, fragrances and colors. But why don’t they always work?

In fact, your lips might be sensitive or even allergic to the ingredients in your stick. Or even in most brand sticks. And since the balm softens your lips once applied but hurts them as they react to the ingredients, you will feel the need to reapply lip balm and get stuck in that vicious circle.

While ingredients like camphor, phenol and menthol gives your lips a soothing sensation, they can also dry up your lips over time. And salicylic acid exfoliates dry lip skin, but can cause irritation to new cells. This goes for other ingredients as well, like benzocaine, an anesthetic, lanolin, alcohol made from wool, paraben, beeswax, and flavors, scents and colors.

So if you have been using lip balm for a while and are only getting worse lips, then it is time to start looking for an alternative.

Try using some milder moisturizers, like vaseline or aquaphor. Or even, if you are brave enough, try using earwax.

As bizarre as it might sound, earwax used to be a very common home remedy for dried out lips. Use cotton swabs and remove some earwax from the outer parts of inside your ear, and re-apply them to your lips. It totally works and isn’t as disgusting as it sounds.

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