Make taking care of your lips your New Year’s resolution with these winter lip care tips!

Lips say a lot about a person. They can be alluring, expressive, soft, or a host of other descriptive terms. That’s why it’s important to keep your lips looking healthy especially during the dry winter months. This can be easily accomplished with a few tips on winter lip care. Knowing a little bit about your lips and how to keep them hydrated are key to keeping them healthy and looking their best.

Let’s start with a few facts about the skin on your lips. Even though your lips are part of your face, they do not contain oil glands like the rest of your facial skin does. This means that they lack natural moisture which is why they need to be moisturized many times throughout the day. The truth is, your lips need more care during the winter months than your face does. Secondly, the skin on your lips is the most driest and thinnest tissue on your body. With those two facts in mind, let’s look at the following five tips to keep your lips hydrated.

Five Tips for Winter Lip Care

1. Use the Best Ingredients: Certain hydrating ingredients are needed to help protect your lips from wintry winds and dry weather. These ingredients, called emollients are easy to find as they’re in many lip balms. Emollients are nourishing to your lips because they help to replace oils in your skin. The more of these emollients in a lip balm product, the better it will be for your lips. Look for any plant oil such as jojoba, olive, coconut, or sunflower oil. Shea butter, aloe vera, beeswax Vitamin E, allantoin, glycerin, and petroleum jelly are also emollients that your lips will appreciate.

2. Look for Humectants: Use products containing humectants which is another group of hydrating ingredients. Humectants will absorb water from the air into your skin and help to keep your lips hydrated. Humectants are oil free ingredients such as urea, glycerin, hyaluronic acid, and propylene glycol. These ingredients are very important for your lips.

3. Avoid Drying Agents: There are also certain ingredients to avoid when choosing a nourishing lip balm. You don’t want to purchase any product that is going to dry your lips and may create problems such as chapped or inflamed lips. Say goodbye to products that have any type of alcohol, corn starch, or other drying agent. Check your lipstick and make sure it doesn’t contain a drying agent. If it does, switch to a lip gloss or at least use a nourishing lip balm under your lipstick whenever you apply it.

4. Exfoliate: One of the best ways to help keep your lips healthy is to exfoliate them. Just as you exfoliate your facial skin in the shower, gently rub the same product over your lips. You can also use a soft toothbrush topped with an exfoliant to remove the dry skin on your lips. Exfoliating your lips once or twice a week will get rid of unwanted dry skin and promote healthier skin to grow. It will keep your lips looking radiant and supple. Products containing papaya are excellent for exfoliating. Papaya contains natural exfoliating enzymes to help get rid of dry skin and to soften healthy tissue. After exfoliating your lips, be sure to finish with a nourishing lip balm.

5. Moisturize at Night:  Moisturize your lips at night by using a lip balm. At nighttime, outside temperatures drop and indoor temperatures rise which creates hot dry air in your home. While you’re sleeping, your lips are affected by this and need to be moisturized. By using a quality nourishing lip balm before going to bed, you’re lips will be moisturized and it will help prevent cracking due to dry skin.

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About the Author: Carleen Coulter

Having a cold sore is no fun. Cold sores are ugly, embarrassing, and they hurt!

Although there is no miracle cure, there are several products that work particularly well as cold sore treatments. Both are a bit pricey when compared to the standard tub of Carmex, but they are well worth the extra cost.

Abreva Cold Sore/Fever Blister Treatment is the next best product I have used. This cream also claims to be able to stop cold sores from fully occurring if used at the first signs of them. It has never worked quite that well for me, but it has cut the healing time substantially. I also know several people who have had it work as claimed. I particularly like to combine Releev and Abreva, since Releev does nothing to moisturize, while Abreva does that a bit. Abreava is also now available in a pump tube.

Something that does not seem to work as well as a cold sore treatment is the use of products that contain petroleum jelly. I have found that while they initially feel soothing, they seem to actually slow down the total healing time and can cause the problem to spread to other areas of the lips.

Aveeno makes several medicated chapped lip treatments, both of which I highly recommend. For medicated moisture in a balm, Aveeno Lip Protectant, Intense Relief Medicated Therapy Balm is enhanced with oatmeal to soothe and jojoba oil and shea butter to moisturize. It is medicated with Menthol and contains petrolatum as a protectant. The same product is also available in a pot: Aveeno Lip Protectant, Intense Relief Medicated Therapy Pot (pictured).

I really like the addition of shea butter in the Aveeno lip treatment products. It makes the balm more moisturizing than a number of other medicated lip balms and it stays on the lips longer. Thus, I don’t feel the need to reapply the Aveeno products as often.

To avoid chapped lips in the first place, also check out Aveeno Lip Conditioner, Essential Moisture SPF 15. This is a nice, non-medicated, SPF lip balm for everyday use.