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How to Treat Chapped Lips
Hello, I'm Dr. Neal Schultz and welcome to DermTV. In order for me to better help you understand how to treat your chapped lips, first I'm going to explain what they are and what causes them. Chapped lips are really just an over drying of the skin of your lip. And the reason it gets over dried is from cold air, low humidity, sunlight or even just strong winds. The reason that the lips get over dried much easily than regular skin on your body is because the skin of your lip is very thin. It’s a mucous membrane let me show you what I mean.
Mucous membranes don’t have any of these thick protective dead layers on top the way regular skin does. And the thickness of regular epidermis is about 15 to 20 cells thick, mucous membrane like the lip is only three to five cells thick. As a matter of fact it’s because it's so thin that it’s almost translucent and you can almost see through it that’s what makes lips pink because you can see the blood and dermis underneath. And because it’s so thin, it's just so much more vulnerable to over drying. It doesn’t have this much protection to hold in moisture. When it dries, it cracks. When it cracks the cracks open up a little bit and let moisture out. As the moisture comes out of this thin skin it contracts and the cracks get bigger and loose more moisture. That’s like a positive feedback cycle of over drying.
And by the way because there is no thick and dead layer up on top, that’s why chapped lips which are just dry skin look very different from regular dry skin. So it’s very easy to take care of chapped lips, we just have to restore the barrier that holds in moisture while the skin of the lip is repairing itself and healing. The best way to do that is with oil based products. So most lip balms and lip aids either have petrolatum or bees wax in them which is heavy and holds that moisture in. A good rule of thumb is, if it’s cold enough outside to put on a coat and then it’s cold enough to start putting a coat of lip balm on your lips. And just make sure one thing if you have chapped lips, don’t lick them. And think of what the function of saliva is in your mouth. It's really there to dissolve and digest food. It does the same thing to the coating on your lip. If you put saliva on your lip you're going to worsen the irritation and you're going to make the chapping worst. So if you have chapped lips, use lip balm and try not to lick your lips.
Please join me again at DermTV.com. If you have a question please send it to me by visiting DermTV.com/question. I'm Dr. Neal Schultz and thank you for watching today.
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