Your lips begin to chap during the winters. These look red, swollen and are painful. Chapped lips can also bleed whenever there is contact with the split area of the lips. It can continuously pain throughout the cold season if some remedies are not taken to remove the dryness. The chapping of lips is mainly due to negligence on our part to keep the lips well lubricated during the dry cold months of the winters. There are many causes and remedies for chapped lips.
Chapped lips happen when the lips have no moisture content. During cold, dry seasons the lips being very soft and tender, lose oils and moisture content and tend to get cracked up. Once they crack they take a long time to heal. Chapping causes more moisture to be lost. Here are the reasons due to which we get chapped lips:
1. When we lick our lips, the saliva stiffens the exterior skin of the lips which crack when we open our mouth. You should apply a lubricant regularly to avoid this.
2. Exposing the skin to the sun, cold winds and frost make the lips dry and lose moisture. Without the essential oils, the lips get exposed.
3. Lipsticks that do not contain moisturizers can cause chaffing and chapping of the lips
4. A poor diet devoid of little fatty acids can also cause chapped, painful lips.
There are three progressive steps to get relief from chapped lips:
• One is to apply petroleum jelly or Vaseline on the lips and let it work on your lips for some time. The lips will soften and become oiled and moisturized. After sometime clean the lips and the flakes of skin come off
• Use a lip balm at night to smoothen the lips so that in the morning it is softer and smoother
• Use a lipstick that is moisturized and does not dry the lips when used
• You could use Vitamin E source to apply on the damaged lips to soften them
• Use castor oil to heal chapped lips
Do not use chap-sticks since they contain alcohol content along with petroleum residues which dry the lips further. Using castor oil lubricates the dry lips and softens them. You need to keep a small bottle of the oil with you at all times to use throughout the day. Apply the oil many times in the day so that the lips remain lubricated.
In case you are going to be exposed to the sun, apply some natural balm of petroleum jelly which contains 15 counts SPF when you have rubbed in a little castor oil.
There are some other tips too which you can follow:
1. When out in the sun avoid over-exposure and apply a lip protection with sun-block cream in it.
2. You can hydrate chapped lips with cloth that has been soaked in salt and cooled to the lips. The salt is a natural healer and when you apply it with a cool wet cloth it heals the splits in the lips.
3. Do not lick your lips quite so often as this chaps them further.
4. Keep up the moisture levels of your body by frequently drinking water up to around 9-10 glasses in the day.
5. Avoid having hot and spicy foods for a few days until the chapped lips heal. Avoid having alcohol at any rate because these dry the system.
While lips that are very seriously chapped can be an ominous day-to-day problem, there are many remedies for these. When the lips are so chapped that blood begins to ooze from these lips, it is a serious problem and might need some attention.
