Dry winter lips are an inevitable companion to colder seasons. Knowing how to get rid of chapped lips will help you stay more comfortable in this weather. We’ve tested many of the diy remedies and products available on the market to discover some of the key things that will get your lips back into shape fast, including two key factors. Keep reading.
Knowing how to cure chapped lips fast is actually only half of the battle. Dry winter lips are only a symptom and it’s important to understand why do lips get dry. We will share all of this information with you so that you are well armed to tackle and even prevent the dryness, cracks and tightness on the lips that comes with cold weather.
Why do lips get dry?
Your lips don’t have oil glands so they don’t naturally lubricate themselves like the majority of the rest of the skin on your body. They are also almost always exposed to the elements because they are not covered by clothing, hair, etc. Wind and cold, dry air that come with the winter months only make the exposure more damaging. However, the good news is that of all the skin on your body, your lips have one of the highest cell turnover rates. That means that when the skin on your lips does get dry, chapped, damaged, etc., it is among the fastest to recover. Therefore, our methods on how to get rid of dry winter lips should work quickly. However, the ultimate takeaway here is that you need to nourish, protect and replenish your lips.
How to get rid of dry lips fast
To get rid of dry lips fast, you will need a greasy lip balm that sticks to your lips. Balms containing ingredients like petroleum jelly, coconut oil, beeswax, almond oil and vitamin E tend to work well. Avoid ingredients that can irritate sensitive skin such as: eucalyptus oil, camphor and menthol.
If possible, try to check the texture of the balm before purchasing it. If it disappears quickly, is runny and doesn’t have much stickiness to it, it won’t be enough to help with dry winter lips. Our favourite is Lanolips Original Ointment. It’s so moisturizing that even bleeding, cracked lips felt instantly soothed. It’s sticking power meant that we didn’t need to apply it to often. Weleda’s Skin Food Lip Butter not only provided intensive nourishment for our dry winter lips, but it also created a barrier to protect them from the elements until they healed properly.
Consistency is key
Because consistent application is one of the most important things when it comes to We recommend getting a couple of tubes of your favourite lip balm to keep with you all the time. Originally, we kept our lip balm in our handbag and would get too lazy to get it out to apply. We started keeping it in our pocket, but then that meant changing pockets and/or losing the balm altogether. So now we keep a couple around to ensure that we always have a layer of balm on our dry winter lips.
Rescue Lip Scrub
A lip scrub sloughs dry, dead skin of your lips, but it must be used with caution on dry winter lips.
If your lips are bleeding or cracked, do not use a lip scrub. Otherwise, we recommend a gentle scrub from non acidic ingredients. So you don’t want salt, sugar or any acidic scrub. For dry winter lips, use only a scrub where the scrub agents are made of natural ingredients such as walnuts, cornmeal, etc. The reason for this is that you want to gently encourage the dry, dead skin to come off your lips, but you don’t want to dry them or aggravate them further with acidic ingredients. We love Baxter’s Cornmeal and Walnut Scrub because it gently removed the dry, dead skin from our lips and did not aggravate them. While it’s intended to be used as a face scrub, we use it only as a lip scrub.
Overnight lip mask
Our bodies repair themselves more at night and our lips are no exception. So why not take advantage of this time when our bodies reparative powers are amplified and put an intensive mask on your lips before bed time? A couple of nights with a lip mask made a big difference for us.
Some of our team still use butter on our dry lips before bedtime. But somehow, the taste of butter is less appealing and there are more powerful remedies out there. The best sleep mask we have found is an old classic by Laneige - Lip Berry Sleep Mask. It goes on quick thick, but when you wake up, you get more dewy, softer and less chapped lips. It also has a nice applicator, which is much more hygenic.
Avoid at all costs
As tempting as it may be to peel the drier skin off your lips, avoid it all costs. This will only perpetuate the cycle. Avoid touching your lips and avoid using a potted lip balm. Use one in a tube in a stick form. Potted lip balms, particularly the kind where you have to use your finger, accumulate dirt and bacteria very quickly. In fact, they become a breeding ground for it with skin cells, germs, etc.
