Anti Aging Tips For the Lips

When it comes to our faces, we try and invest on all sorts of anti aging creams, eye creams, serums, pills and treatments just because we want to look young as long as we can. But it's very rare to hear and read anything about age proofing the lips. Sadly, the lips are the most neglected part of most anti aging regimens. They do need a lot of care, but they are often overlooked and even totally neglected. Unknown to many, the lips can be a dead giveaway of how old or young a person is so it deserves the same amount of attention as the other parts of the face. With this, let me share to you some anti aging tips for the lips. Here are some of them.

1. Avoid constantly licking your lips. Contrary to popular belief, licking your lips has no moisturising or hydrating effect at all. As a matter of fact, licking your lips can actually dry them out. Saliva contains digestive enzymes that evaporates quickly as you lick, leaving your lips drier than before you licked them. Dry, cracked and chapped lips can make your face look ugly so enough with the licking.

2. Avoid unprotected sun exposure. Just like our facial skin, our lips can also get damaged when exposed to the sun. The sun's UV rays can darken, wrinkle and dry out the lips, making you look old and lifeless. To prevent this, try to avoid the sun between 11 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon because that is when the sun is at its strongest. If you really need to go outside, make sure to use a lip balm with SPF and reapply it after a couple of hours to protect your lips from damage.

3. Wear lip balm with sun protection factor (SPF). Sunscreen is an essential product of every skin care regimen, but let us not forget our lips. Our lips also gets damaged by the sun's harmful UV rays if left unprotected. This is why it is important to wear a lip balm with SPF every single day. Apart from protecting the lips from sound damage, it also prevents discoloration, wrinkling, dryness and chapping.

4. Exfoliate lips regularly. It's a good practice to exfoliate your lips at least once a week. Exfoliation can help get rid of the dry and dead skin on the lip's surface. It can also help lighten lips that are discolored due to sun damage. To exfoliate your lips, you can use a mixture of sugar and olive oil or if you want something fancy, you can buy those flavoured lip scrubs in the market. Make sure to moisturize your lips after exfoliating them.

5 Avoid smoking. Smoking is one of the primary causes of both the wrinkles in the skin around the lips and the lips itself. It also dries out the lips which can make it look unhealthy and old, so better ditch that stick before it's too late.-By Mich Ching

Six Common Causes of Lip Sores

Comment from my mailbox: Hi Dr. Moffat --I just wanted to let you know that my lips cracking in the corners are all healed up today! Looks like the call on the lip balm was perfect -- I started using mint lip balm from Trader Joe's after I got your message on Monday. The little bumps on the upper edge of my lip is also gone and the corners aren't all puffy anymore either. Thanks again for testing that for me. The fact that it wasn't healing was driving me nuts. Sheila.

Sheila was having a couple different challenges with her lips. Because they were not responding, she kept trying new things. We found several things she was using occasionally and a couple of things she was using more consistently that she was allergic to.

This is a common thing that people do for both themselves and their pets (trying lots of products when something isn't working then not knowing which products are causing the problem.) Unfortunately sometimes this only makes the problem worse and difficult to decipher--unless you use muscle testing which is what we did.

In general though:

1) People are often allergic to products containing petroleum and even some products labeled "hypoallergenic". Occasionally people are allergic to their toothpaste and more often to their lipstick/lip balm. Many people are allergic to Neosporin and Chap Stick. I recommend Mentholatum Lip Balm often. It comes in tube, like Chap Stick. There are also homeopathic remedies to detox the body of what it is allergically responding to.

2) Sores on the outside corners of the mouth are usually vitamin deficiencies--especially vitamin B6.

3) Sores on the top and bottom lip edge are often allergies to something being put on the lips and often this can be aggravated by sunshine.

4) Canker sores, herpes sores and cold sores are often related to what it is in the person's life that they are "biting their tongue" about or not saying out loud and is also accentuated by stress, poor diet, not enough raw foods, and sleep issues (in combination of course).

5) Sores inside the lip and under the tongue can sometimes be viral in origin or an allergy to something. I know a few people who are allergic to nutmeg which causes a little vesicle to form under the tongue on the frenulum.

6) White sores on the mouth are usually caused from yeast (Candida). Try getting a lip product that contains Myrrh essential oil. You will also have incorporate lifestyle changes to overcome the yeast inside your system.

I hope those clues can empower you to figure out the cause of the most common lip challenges. Sometimes they make your lips itch, they can make you feel ugly, and you certainly don't want to kiss anybody! We don't want that for you as loving yourself is the most important thing you can do for your family and your planet!

By Denice Moffat