Winter Lip Care

The advent of winter brings about a lot of change in nature-frigid air, snowflakes and gloomy skies. Just like our skin gets dehydrated and wrinkled in winter so does our lips. With the harsh winter weather outdoors and high central heating indoors, even the softest of lips can soon dry out. Winter lip care is a must in an overall lip care regime. Harsh weather, wind, and cold turn the soft lips into chapped lips that not only are visually unappealing, but very painful in some cases. Here are a few more tips to keep your lips nourished and healthy during the winter.

1. The skin on lips lack oil glands hence they tend to get dry and cracked easily. You have to take special care of your lips to maintain its requisite moisture level.
   

2. Massaging lips with ghee (clarified butter) and leaving a thin layer of it on lips overnight acts as a natural protection for lips.
   

3. Keep them covered with a good lip balm applied several times during the day. Lip balms are now commonly available with an SPF factor as well to protect them from the harmful rays. Make sure the lip balm contains SPF 15 or 20. Other ingredients to look out for while buying a lip balm or chap stick are vitamin E and Shea butter.
   

4. Avoid licking your lips and don't bite the skin on the surface of your lips. The skin will never have a chance to heal if you chew on it. This is a hard habit to break but well worth the effort. It also darken the skin around the mouth.
   

5. Cracked lips could be a sign that your diet is low in B vitamins. The best sources of vitamin B are meat products, yeast, asparagus, broccoli, spinach, bananas, potatoes, milk, eggs, cheese, yoghurt, nuts, pulses, fish, wholegrain cereals, brown rice, apricots and figs, so it shouldn't be hard to top up your vitamin B if required.
   

6. Massaging lips with ghee (clarified butter) and leaving a thin layer of it on lips overnight acts as a natural protection for lips.
   

7. The chapped lips when rubbed with a matt lipstick, take in a mass of the lipstick. This also ruins the tip of the lipstick with scratchy lines. The lipstick is left uneven and the gloss on it makes the cracked lips very prominent. This constant action of applying lipstick and then the gloss sometimes causes the dried and delicate skin of the lip to peel off.
   

8. Dip a black tea bag in warm water and press it on lips for three to four minutes. This increases moisture level on skin of lips.
   

9. Drinking water isn't just for the summer months. Everyone feels like drinking hot drinks in winter. Even though it feels unnatural, make sure you keep drinking water so you're hydrated on the inside, making your skin and lips better on the outside - about 8 cups a day is ideal.
   

10. To relax the lip, mash a quarter of ripe papaya to a juicy paste. Then, lie down on a towel and apply a generous amount to the lips and the skin around the lips. Leave it on for 10 to 15 minutes, rinse it off and apply lip balm. Papaya contains exfoliating enzymes and can help to soften and refine lip lines.