In the dead of winter, it’s habit to rely on your trusty lip balm to bring life back to your chapped smackers — but experts warn it could be doing more harm than good.
“A lot of the products that we’re using are actually making things worse, even in your traditional ChapStick,” board-certified dermatologist Dr. Muneeb Shah told The Post.
Menthol, peppermint, castor oil, beeswax and even some fragrances are actually irritating to the lips, which, ironically, “are the ingredients that you often find in lip balms,” he explained.
Because of this, his patients and TikTok viewers — who know him best as @DermDoctor — have complained of a lip balm “addiction,” feeling as if they are constantly and excessively reapplying the products throughout the day.
Constantly licking lips due to dryness or the flavor of a balm can lead to “lip lickers’ dermatitis,” or “redness and irritation” around the mouth, he added.
“I always recommend people avoid flavors to their lip balms because if you have a flavor on your lips, you’re definitely gonna lick your lips more often because you’re going to want to taste that flavor,” he said. “And that saliva has these enzymes that break down food and it ends up breaking down the skin once it spreads beyond the lip.”
With the proliferation of TikTok-touted lip products — Rhode, Summer Fridays and Laneige, to name a few — it’s easy to deviate from tried and true moisturizing products and opt for one with a higher price tag.
“I think that there’s this idea that the more expensive something is, the more effective it’s going to be,” Shah said, although that’s not always the case.
“For ingredients that are moisturizing, it doesn’t really make sense for them to be expensive unless they’re adding in things that are oftentimes going to cause issues with the skin.”
Instead, he recommends using occlusive products like Vaseline or Aquaphor — not the kind formulated for lips, however, which has “more irritants.” Applying the pure petrolatum on top of a face moisturizer, he added, locks in the moisture.
“It’s occlusive, so you’re not really bringing moisture to the lips, but you’re preventing the lips from drying out,” Shah said, likening it to “slugging for the lips.”
Healing ointments from common drugstore favorites like Cerave and Cetaphil offer healing ointments that provide moisture to the lips as well, he suggested, although they aren’t as glamorous as the viral products with color or gloss.
“I think that’s probably why they’re not prioritizing like the more affordable drugstore options, because they’re going more for like the aesthetic of it all,” he said, noting that people often prioritize “aesthetic over function or efficacy.”
“I kind of lean towards simplicity. It’s not sexy, but it works.”
