Lip Balms

Lip balms are substances that are topically applied to the lips to relieve dry and chapped lips. A condition most common to motorcycle drivers and individuals, it became common during the advent of air conditioners, which regulate temperatures while also lowering the humidity of the surrounding air. Chapped and dry lips in the past used to be a condition that’s mainly ignored or else bettered by drinking lots of water and wetting the affected portion of the lips occasionally with water. However, in the recent decades, lip balms had surfaced not only to address fully this type of dry lips discomfort but also treat diseases like cold sores, angular cheilitis or even stomatitis.

Most common lip balm ingredients include beeswax, petroleum jelly with parts of menthol and camphor to alleviate the pain, scented oils, and various other ingredients. And since a lip balm’s primary function is trapping moisture in the lips to prevent it from drying up, hypoallergenic substances like petroleum jelly and beeswax can be used individually as natural lip balm substitute. Many manufacturers add their own recipe to lip balm manufacturing, probably with hopes to have one successful recipe that could generate the “getting used to feeling” only provided by a certain product. Some add vitamins such as Vitamin D to further the repair of the skin damage, alum to keep it moisturized, salicylic acid and/ or aspirin to relieve the pain. Mentol and camphor are also added to generate a soothing feeling. Some designs of lip balms are even sweetened so that it prvides even more benefits.

How Does Lip Chaffing Occur

The wind bearing the face, and the lips creates a friction, which in the prolonged run causes wind chaff. In the lips, this becomes lip chaff. Lip chaff is common to motorcyclist that they face the relative wind, severely drying up the skin surface of their face.

Dry and cold temperatures are also responsible for lip chaffing. Especially in the winter, lip chaffing occurs due to cold, frigid air that constantly blow on your face. In air-conditioned rooms, the process by which the air conditioner system works reduces the amount of humidity in the air. If this happen, the air in turn would draw moisture on areas of your body, affecting most especially the sensitive tissue composing you lips. Deprived of moisture, lips then crack up, resulting to a painful predicament of your lip.

Habitually drinking water, and also wetting your lips while drinking can avoid lip chaffing. Also, wetting your lips by the means of your tongue is one way of eliminating lip chaffs and the need for lip balms.

One sign of skin dehydration is definitely lip chaffs, that’s why instead of buying lip balms, you treat it by drinking more fluid. The more liquid you intake, the more fluid is present on your lips, making it more resistant to breakage.

Lip balms are often distributed in packaging similar to lipstick. They are obviously topical, intended for application directly on the lips. Even on cracked portions, on the affected areas, as most lip balms are hypoallergenic and would instead sooth damages in the skin. Some lip balms are packaged as gels – on small containers where the finger is used to apply on the affected area.

Some accounts regarding lip balms have surfaced in the late 1990s, all claiming that lip balms promote an addiction to the substance. However, skin experts reasoned the accounts to be purely physchological, as the soothing presence of lip balms would constantly remind the user of the product. Even if the symptoms have disappeared, lip balms can generate a feeling of familiarity that may become hard to shake off.