Lanolips Stash

I’d say this is about half of my Lanolips stash! I had a sort out of my make up drawers and turned out these but as I keep one tube in every handbag, plus my children steal my tubes all the time, this pile is only about half – conservatively estimated. I’m seeing so many chats about dry lips so just thought I’d do a very quick Lip SOS post.

If your lips are really dry – and they probably will be due to the perfect storm of wind, cold and central heating – you need to stop moisture from leaving them. If you think about it, wind just literally whips the moisture out of all skin that’s exposed and lip skin is no different. If you have a highly flavoured balm, no matter how lovely, chances are that you are unconsciously licking it off and when you do that, you wet your lips. Then the wind blows over wet skin and your problems double! So, ditch the flavours. Even if there is no wind and you’re indoors, you will end up licking more which only exacerbates the problem. There is also nothing like dry, flaky lips to attract more lip licking – why do we do this! There are no sweat or oil glands in lip skin so you don’t have the same protection in that area as you do on the rest of your body – hence chapping and drying. If your lips are chronically dry and flaky, use a (paper) straw for a while when you drink (honestly, I’m not making it up!) to minimize further moisture loss.

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As long as your lip skin can tolerate cheap and cheerful balms (i.e Vaseline), they’ll act as a perfectly decent barrier, but they won’t ‘moisturise’ as such. If the formulas contain menthol (minty balms) or highly perfumed ingredients your lips can get even more irritated than they were in first place – you end up in a cycle of adding more balm, which dries your lips even more and you carry on in that routine eternally wondering why your lips are never smooth. Once you’ve got dry lips, it’s not a matter of a few balm applications and everything is fine – it can take several days to restore them. You can exfoliate your lips (it really does help) by adding a little bit of balm to a muslin cloth or flannel and rubbing it gently over your lips.

Your checklist for choosing a balm should read:

NO FLAVOUR

HIGH CONTENT OF MOISTURISING INGREDIENTS (i.e. natural oils blended with wax such as shea butter, avocado oil, Vitamin E)

NO PERFUME (unless natural, otherwise, it’s too drying)

My top picks for balms to treat very dry lips are Lanolips 101, Sisley and Malin & Goetz. Malin has a high fatty acid content and so stays on lips for longer (it’s harder to lick off) acting as both barrier and nourisher, Lanolips 101 moisturises with medical grade lanolin that mimics human skin lipids (good one to apply before bed every single night) and Sisley which although is madly expensive, rehydrates with hazelnut, plum kernel and sunflower oils along with shea and kokum butters. As you can see, I’m a Lano fan through and through – it’s on offer at Boots for £8.99 HERE, Malin & Goetz is £10 HERE and Sisley, £47.50 is HERE.

Lastly, if you can’t bear the idea of no colour on your lips (Lanolips does colours btw), you can add in a lip tint as in the picture above – I’ve used Erborian, but any tints you have such as Origins Pinch Your Cheeks or even a tiny bit of creme blush if you have it, is absolutely fine.