Many popular lip balm brands, like Laneige, EOS (remember them?), Burt's Bees, Chapstick, and even high-end brands like Sisley Paris Nutritive Lip Balm, can create a cycle of dependency without providing significant benefits. This is because they often contain irritating ingredients such as fragrance, essential oils, or colorants, or they lack ingredients that truly heal your lips.
Why Do Our Lips Act Up?
The skin on our lips is unlike any other skin on our body. Lips do not have a strong barrier like the rest of our skin. Our skin barrier is a thin layer of dead skin cells hanging out in a magical goo made of sebum, sweat, lactic acid, and fatty acids. This is called the stratum corneum or "acid mantle" and it regulates the skin's pH and protects it from outside elements, as well as keeps moisture in. The stratum corneum on the lips is much thinner than anywhere else on our body and so, the skin on our lips is more delicate.
Our lips also do not have any sebaceous (oil) or sudoriferous (sweat) glands, so they cannot produce very much of that magical goo our skin uses to protect itself. When the lips can't produce their own oil, they cannot protect themselves from environmental factors like wind or extreme cold. The skin on our lips is 5 times thinner than the skin on the rest of our face, which makes it easily damaged and susceptible to dehydration and dryness.
What Makes an Effective Lip Balm?
Most lip balms are made up, primarily, of occlusives like petroleum jelly, beeswax, or oils to protect the lips from environmental stressors like wind, dry air, cold, or heat. Occlusives are great at preventing TEWL (trans-epidermal water loss, which is where water literally evaporates out of our skin and into the air) and can prevent your lips from dehydrating by preserving their natural moisture. What occlusives aren't great at is ADDING hydration.
Occlusives are ingredients like:
petrolatum (petroleum jelly)
argan oil
beeswax
borage seed oil
safflower oil
olive oil
tamanu oil
mineral oil
In order to hydrate your lips, we need humectants. Humectants attract moisture from the air and from the deeper layers of the skin in order to hydrate the lips. Lip balms that contain humectants will help add hydration but need an occlusive to keep that hydration from evaporating out of the skin.
Common humectants are:
glycerin
hyaluronic acid
calendula
honey
aloe vera
vitamin E
Emollients are another ingredient that help lip balms soften and smooth dehydrated and dry skin. Think of dry, cracked lips. They are stiff and rough and the flaps of broken skin that are trying to slough off have dried into crusty bits. Emollients help soften this skin and smooth out the texture. This is the element that makes lip balms feel good on the lips and why we keep slathering it on.
Some common emollients are:
shea butter
jojoba oil
avocado oil
honey
vitamin E
The problem with most lip balms is that they often contain fragrance, colorants, and/or essential oils. We, in general, love something that smells nice. Also, lots of skincare ingredients just smell gross, so fragrance is used to mask those unpleasant scents. The issue is that fragrance, colorant, and essential oils are all quite irritating. They may not irritate healthy, in-tact skin, but once the skin is dry, inflamed, dehydrated, or open wounds develop, these ingredients can irritate the lips and keep them dry, inflamed, and dehydrated.
This creates a cycle: lips are dry and uncomfortable, we use lip balm to soothe them, fragrance and additives dry the lips more, need more lip balm, repeat. This is perpetuated by the face that most lip balms don't contain ingredients to actually HEAL your lips.
What Should Be In My Lip Balm?
Lips balms are going to be most effective when they are free from colorants, fragrances, and essential oils, but also have a healing ingredient deck. Lip balms that contain not only occlusives, humectants, and emollients, but CERAMIDES (and maybe peptides, if you're feeling fancy) are going to be the best for your lips.
Ceramides:
Ceramides are lipids (fats) that we naturally have in our skin, making up about 50% of the skin, overall. Young, healthy skin makes tons of ceramides! As we age, or as we encounter skin damage from sun or the environment, we produce less ceramides and the quality of those ceramides goes down. Ceramides make up the majority of our skin barrier. Think of your skin as this stone-paved driveway. The skin cells are the stones and ceramides are the mortar between the stones, holding them together. Ceramides are also the sealer on top to protect the stones and keep them shiny and nice. Ceramides, like occlusives, protect our skin from TEWL and environmental stress. Because they support the barrier that protects our skin, ceramides enable the skin to repair itself and heal damage.
Ingredients to look for:
ceramide AP
ceramide EOP
ceramide NG
ceramide NS
phytosphingosine and sphingosine*
*stimulates the skin to make ceramides on it's own
Squalane:
Squalene is a lipid that is found in our own sebum. In beauty products, look for "squalane," as this is a more stable, cruelty-free form of squalene. Because it's close to a lipid we produce on our own, squalane is a great emollient to help smooth and soften our lips.
Peptides:
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that, essentially build proteins. Collagen is a protein our bodies produce, naturally. It keeps our skin firm and plump. Peptides help in collagen production, which keeps your lips a bit more pillowy and less Raisin Bran.
Lip Balm Recommendations
This is the lip balm I use in my kit and it's super effective to get lips ready for makeup quickly. Key Ingredients: hyaluronic acid, castor seed oil, glycerin, squalane, rose flower wax (rose scent without the synthetic fragrance. The wax also serves as an emollient.), vitamin e, ceramide NP, and jojoba
I recently discovered that this has been discontinued and replaced with a product that does contain peptides, but also contains flavor and fragrance. You can still find this on Ebay, though.
Completely unscented, slightly thicker than the Biossance lip balm, and packing an extra punch with FIVE ceramides, this lip balm is my go-to when I gift something to a client. Works for everyone as long as they are not allergic to tree nuts.
Key Ingredients: Petrolatum, Jojoba Oil, Shea Butter, Macadamia Oil, Olive Oil, Ceramide NP, Ceramide NS, Ceramide AS, Ceramide EOP, Ceramide AP, Panthenol , Trehalose, Glycerin
Unscented, unflavored and about the same texture as Blistex but without the medicinal flavor and numbing qualities. This formula is cruelty-free, vegan, and reef-safe. Without fragrance to mask the scent of the ingredients, this lip treatment does have a slightly .... organic smell. It's not bad, but I wouldn't say, "this smells nice." You also cannot smell it on your lips -- only when your intrusive thoughts motivate you to directly smell the product in the applicator. Don't let the ingredient desk scare you with this one. This lip product is full of skin conditioners, occlusives, ceramides, peptides, and non-irritating exfoliants.
Key Ingredients:
Bis-Diglyceryl Polyacyladipate-2, PHYTOSTERYL/ISOSTEARYL/CETYL/STEARYL/BEHENYL DIMER DILINOLEATE, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Diisostearyl Malate,
Polyglyceryl-2 Isostearate/Dimer Dilinoleate Copolymer,
Ceresin, Hydrogenated Lecithin, Ceramide NP, Ceramide AS, Ceramide AP, Ceramide EOP, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Panthenol
This is what I purchased to replace the Biossance Rose Vegan Lip Balm and, although it doesn't smell as nice, it does a similar job. This is the only balm on the list that does actually contain some sort of fragrance
Key Ingredients:
PHYTOSTERYL/ISOSTEARYL/CETYL/STEARYL/BEHENYL DIMER DILINOLEATE, DIISOSTEARYL MALATE, PENTAERYTHRITYL TETRAETHYLHEXANOATE,
HYDROGENATED POLYISOBUTENE, CERESIN, TRIBEHENIN, CAPRYLIC/CAPRIC/MYRISTIC/STEARIC TRIGLYCERIDE,
SILICA DIMETHYL SILYLATE, CERAMIDE NP, HIPPOPHAE RHAMNOIDES (SEA BUCKTHORN) OIL
Other Honorable Mentions:
Give one of these a try the next time your lips are craving some moisture, you're recovering from a cold, or winter is victimizing your lips. I've even applied some of these under my nose after being sick when that skin is chapped and inflamed (I'm not prone to breakouts, though -- don't do this if you breakout at the sight of something occlusive) to protect and heal that chapped skin.
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