As the mercury begins to display temperatures nearing 32°F, it's time to boost your skin's hydration. But that's not all. To prevent them from chapping, your lips also need protection against the dryness of the first chills. Typology provides you with the right habits to properly choose your lip balm.
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How to properly choose your lip balm?
Summary
- Why do lips become chapped in winter?
- Targeting the unique characteristics of your lips
- The active ingredients to prioritize
- The fragrances contained in certain moisturizing treatments
- Mineral oils
Published March 3, 2021,
updated on October 4, 2024,
by
Stéphanie, PhD, Doctorate in Life and Health Sciences
—
4 min read
Why do lips become chapped in winter?
With skin that is more sensitive and 5 times thinner than the rest of the body, the lips are on the front line when it comes to external aggressions. Their fragility stems from two major factors. The first is physiological, in that your lips do not produce melanin, have no sebaceous glands or sweat glands that allow for sebum secretions necessary to protect the skin from pollution, the effects of smoking, temperature variations, or even certain acidic or spicy foods that can also be drying factors.
Another often overlooked culprit: saliva. While it's true that moistening the lips provides an immediate soothing sensation, it is quickly followed by tightness and chapping. As surprising as it may seem, wetting the lips leads to dehydration when the saliva evaporates. If you're experiencing dryness and an urgent need for hydration, the protective balm remains your best ally.
Targeting the unique characteristics of your lips.
The first step before choosing your future lip balm is to assess what your lips truly need during the winter season. Tightness, redness, chapping, or even peeling... The lips are somewhat a "witness" area of the various needs of your skin. Therefore, be attentive to find the balm that meets their demands.
The active ingredients to prioritize.
Lips prone to redness, chapping, or dryness have two distinct needs that must be met. Firstly, they are thirsty and require hydration. To achieve this, the application of a balm enriched with aloe vera (an active ingredient composed of 98% water, which also has soothing, healing, and moisturizing properties) is ideal. But that's not all. They also need lipids to rebuild themselves and prevent water evaporation. This is a tailor-made job for vegetable oils and butters such as the shea butter or coconut oil, known for their high nutritional richness. So, don't hesitate to rely on them.
The fragrances contained in certain moisturizing treatments.
At first glance, moisturizing your lips at the same time as your skin doesn't seem like a misstep. However, the fragrances contained in your facial moisturizers are not suitable for the delicate skin of your mouth, which will dry out upon contact with them. The potent active ingredients found in moisturizing creams should also be avoided as they cause a real imbalance when absorbed by the lips.
Mineral oils.
Paraffin, a star ingredient in lip balms, is actually one of the worst cosmetic ingredients for your skin's health. Derived from petroleum, it has no hydrating power and only serves to coat your lips with a greasy film that provides a (misleading) sense of comfort. Comedogenic, it disrupts the natural mechanisms of the epidermis and only exacerbates skin dryness...
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