Winter is here, and while it’s the season for celebration, it does come with its own host of problems. Ashy elbows, sandpaper-like skin and chapped lips – you can’t make it through sweater weather without moisturising on the daily. For those of you who moisturise and still have to deal with dry skin and cracked lips, then maybe, just maybe, it’s not you, but your beauty products to blame.
This Is Why Your Lip Balm Is Making Your Chapped Lips Even Worse
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What’s strange is that some of these lip balm products promise intense hydration or 24 hr hydration on the packaging. However, in reality, it’s far from the truth. In fact, they worsen the condition of chapped lips by making them even drier than they were before. Why is that so? Welcome to the world of false advertising! Where packaging is given more importance and credit than the quality of a product. You see, attractive packaging boosts sales and the only way to not fall into its trap, is to educate yourself.
Look beyond cutesy packaging and pay attention to the ingredient list. If the lip balm has only hyaluronic acid and glycerin, it will do more harm than good for chapped lips. Since these ingredients tend to pull out more moisture from the skin during chilly weathers, they will naturally make your lips dry and chapped.
For these humectant ingredients to work their magic, it needs to be paired with other occlusive and hydrating ingredients. Keep an eye out for beeswax, cocoa butter, shea butter, Vitamin E, honey or lanolin. So how do humectant and occlusive ingredients work? Well, while humectant ingredients hold on to moisturise, occlusive ingredients prevent it from getting evaporated. For a lip balm to do its job at keeping your lips moisturised and hydrated, it needs to have both, humectant and occlusive ingredients, in it.
The next time you go shopping for the perfect lip balm, you now know what to look for!
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