I have recurring chapped, peeling lips. When I take a shower, the outer layer of my lips gets very soft and then rubs off. It then grows back hard and scaly, only to soften and rub off again the next time I shower. I have a tube of ChapStick by my bed but use it infrequently; it seems to have the same softening effect as showering. Any advice?
The softening is a feature, not a bug! The skin that comes off and rubs off was already dead.
When healthy, your lips—and indeed your whole skin—have oils in the outer layer, to keep the skin flexible and to act as a mechanical barrier (keeping the outside out and the inside in—in particular, water). When this oil isn’t there (whether your skin doesn’t produce enough, or it is removed by something), your skin dries out, and starts to flake. It typically gets very sore too, and prone to infections.
Drinking more might help, but frankly I doubt it unless you are chronically dehydrated and have other symptoms. It’s far more likely a dehydration problem local to your lips.
I recommend training yourself to develop a lip salve/ChapStick habit—particularly before you go outside (when you’re most at risk from lip dehydration), and before bedtime (when it has a good chance of staying on undisturbed). I also recommend training yourself out of any lip-licking habit you may have. Licking your lips a lot tends to strip the oil from them. This can become a vicious circle if you are licking your lips because they are sore.
Lip salve works because it (a) adds oil to the skin, making it more flexible and thus less prone to painful cracking; (b) provides a mechanical barrier to loss of moisture; and (c) provides a cue to help discourage you from licking your lips.
Some ideas for developing a lip salve habit: Buy lots of sticks and put them all over the place, so you are never far away from one. Put one in your outside coat pocket so you notice it when you go out. Put one on the shelf by the door where you pick up your keys before you go out. Develop a mental link between putting on a hat (to protect your head from the cold) with putting on lip salve (to protect your lips). Put lip salve in places that you can’t avoid: balanced on the outside door handle, on seats you use the whole time, inside your hat or gloves, etc. If you are avoiding lip salve because it tastes horrible, experiment with flavours until you find one you like. (If you are licking your lips more because you like the taste of the lip salve, or find it less aversive, you may need to make a compromise.) Set a reminder on your phone every hour (or at pseudorandom intervals) to remind you to put on lipsalve. Log how many times a day you remember to put it on and monitor yourself on Beeminder.
I’ve heard that if you use lip balm too often, your lips lose their ability to lubricate themselves. I don’t know if this is true or not, only that I can’t go more than a few hours without applying lip balm without experiencing the same symptoms CronoDAS describes, and this has been the case for as long as I can remember.
The softening is a feature, not a bug! The skin that comes off and rubs off was already dead.
Some of it, anyway. However I think some not-useless skin tends to come off with it; what’s underneath tends to be somewhat tender, as though I peeled off a scab.
I suggest not rubbing off the skin when it’s softened. Some might fall off on its own, and that’s fine, but don’t fiddle with it. The analogy with a scab is a good one: a scab also gets softened and easier to rub or peel off when it’s wet, and a scab is also not alive, but the skin underneath is not fully healed yet. Removing a scab or the flaky skin from your lips before they are ready to fall off naturally doesn’t help the skin heal, and it hurts. As the old doctor joke goes, “Don’t do that, then.”
Skin heals faster and with less scarring when it’s hydrated. Lip salve keeps your lips hydrated so they can heal quicker. Lip salve also keeps your lips hydrated and protected with an oily barrier to reduce damage from chapping.
As an aside, ‘moist wound healing’ is a classic of evidence-based medicine. The evidence for a significant effect is pretty strong, and has been for decades. Wounds generally heal faster and with less scarring if you keep them moist and don’t allow a scab to form. Expert opinion in the field is now more or less agreed on that, clinical practice is patchy and lags a little behind, and folk beliefs are often even further behind that—most people still insist that it’s vitally important to dry out wounds to form as scab as soon as possible. Folk practice might have been good advice before the availability of antiseptics, antibiotics, and modern moisture-retaining dressings (e.g. hydrocolloid) but it isn’t now.
You look to be confused between petroleum and petrolatum.
It appears that some people are memetically opposed to using petroleum-derived skincare products — at least, that must be why some of them are advertised as “petroleum-free”.
Anyway, there is a large variety of moisturising goos one can use instead, based on such things as lanolin or cocoa butter. As Clarity is in Australia, he (I think) might try finding a local branch of the Body Shop and asking the advice of the sales assistants.
I have recurring chapped, peeling lips. When I take a shower, the outer layer of my lips gets very soft and then rubs off. It then grows back hard and scaly, only to soften and rub off again the next time I shower. I have a tube of ChapStick by my bed but use it infrequently; it seems to have the same softening effect as showering. Any advice?
The softening is a feature, not a bug! The skin that comes off and rubs off was already dead.
When healthy, your lips—and indeed your whole skin—have oils in the outer layer, to keep the skin flexible and to act as a mechanical barrier (keeping the outside out and the inside in—in particular, water). When this oil isn’t there (whether your skin doesn’t produce enough, or it is removed by something), your skin dries out, and starts to flake. It typically gets very sore too, and prone to infections.
Drinking more might help, but frankly I doubt it unless you are chronically dehydrated and have other symptoms. It’s far more likely a dehydration problem local to your lips.
I recommend training yourself to develop a lip salve/ChapStick habit—particularly before you go outside (when you’re most at risk from lip dehydration), and before bedtime (when it has a good chance of staying on undisturbed). I also recommend training yourself out of any lip-licking habit you may have. Licking your lips a lot tends to strip the oil from them. This can become a vicious circle if you are licking your lips because they are sore.
Lip salve works because it (a) adds oil to the skin, making it more flexible and thus less prone to painful cracking; (b) provides a mechanical barrier to loss of moisture; and (c) provides a cue to help discourage you from licking your lips.
Some ideas for developing a lip salve habit: Buy lots of sticks and put them all over the place, so you are never far away from one. Put one in your outside coat pocket so you notice it when you go out. Put one on the shelf by the door where you pick up your keys before you go out. Develop a mental link between putting on a hat (to protect your head from the cold) with putting on lip salve (to protect your lips). Put lip salve in places that you can’t avoid: balanced on the outside door handle, on seats you use the whole time, inside your hat or gloves, etc. If you are avoiding lip salve because it tastes horrible, experiment with flavours until you find one you like. (If you are licking your lips more because you like the taste of the lip salve, or find it less aversive, you may need to make a compromise.) Set a reminder on your phone every hour (or at pseudorandom intervals) to remind you to put on lipsalve. Log how many times a day you remember to put it on and monitor yourself on Beeminder.
I’ve heard that if you use lip balm too often, your lips lose their ability to lubricate themselves. I don’t know if this is true or not, only that I can’t go more than a few hours without applying lip balm without experiencing the same symptoms CronoDAS describes, and this has been the case for as long as I can remember.
this was an unhelpful comment, removed and replaced by this comment
So, you are wary of lip balm, but you want to try lip balm with antibiotics instead..? X-/
Some of it, anyway. However I think some not-useless skin tends to come off with it; what’s underneath tends to be somewhat tender, as though I peeled off a scab.
Oops, sorry, I failed to spell things out here.
I suggest not rubbing off the skin when it’s softened. Some might fall off on its own, and that’s fine, but don’t fiddle with it. The analogy with a scab is a good one: a scab also gets softened and easier to rub or peel off when it’s wet, and a scab is also not alive, but the skin underneath is not fully healed yet. Removing a scab or the flaky skin from your lips before they are ready to fall off naturally doesn’t help the skin heal, and it hurts. As the old doctor joke goes, “Don’t do that, then.”
Skin heals faster and with less scarring when it’s hydrated. Lip salve keeps your lips hydrated so they can heal quicker. Lip salve also keeps your lips hydrated and protected with an oily barrier to reduce damage from chapping.
As an aside, ‘moist wound healing’ is a classic of evidence-based medicine. The evidence for a significant effect is pretty strong, and has been for decades. Wounds generally heal faster and with less scarring if you keep them moist and don’t allow a scab to form. Expert opinion in the field is now more or less agreed on that, clinical practice is patchy and lags a little behind, and folk beliefs are often even further behind that—most people still insist that it’s vitally important to dry out wounds to form as scab as soon as possible. Folk practice might have been good advice before the availability of antiseptics, antibiotics, and modern moisture-retaining dressings (e.g. hydrocolloid) but it isn’t now.
this was an unhelpful comment, removed and replaced by this comment
You look to be confused between petroleum and petrolatum.
It appears that some people are memetically opposed to using petroleum-derived skincare products — at least, that must be why some of them are advertised as “petroleum-free”.
Anyway, there is a large variety of moisturising goos one can use instead, based on such things as lanolin or cocoa butter. As Clarity is in Australia, he (I think) might try finding a local branch of the Body Shop and asking the advice of the sales assistants.
Could it be that you’re not drinking enough water?
Dunno. I tend to breathe through my mouth when going to sleep and my mouth is dry when I wake up, which may or may not mean anything.