Building the Perfect Lip Care Routine

Lip care is an often-overlooked part of skincare but needs to be an essential part of your daily routine. Today’s article will help you take your dry, cracked lips and turn them into hydrated, plump lips.

Keep reading to learn how to get naturally plump lips with a simple lip care routine. This article will cover how to take care of your lips, especially as you get older, and answer some of your most burning questions, such as:

• How often should you exfoliate your lips?
• What are the ingredients to look for in lip balm?
• Do lips need sunscreen?

Let’s get started!

Keeping Lips Youthful as You Age

As we age, the skin begins to lose structure and elasticity, contributing to fine lines, wrinkles, pigmentation changes, and other visible signs of aging. The lips are part of the skin, and your lips experience the same aging process, making them appear thinner.

However, the lips don’t have sebaceous glands that produce oil as your skin does, so it becomes more challenging for the lips to retain softness and moisture. Add in a cold or dry climate, sun exposure, and other skin stressors, and you have a recipe for dry, chapped, or cracked lips.

The good news is that you can turn thinning lips into youthful lips with a daily lip care routine.

Building the Perfect Daily Lip Care Routine

Experience fuller-looking lips with just a few simple steps, including exfoliation, hydration, and protection.

Step 1: Exfoliate

You may take the time to exfoliate your face and body but likely neglect your lips. Like the rest of your skin, lip cells turnover and dead skin cells can collect on the surface.

Gentle exfoliation removes dead skin cells and other impurities, making your lips softer and smoother. Exfoliation allows other lip products to penetrate the lips and lip color to stay in place.

Exfoliate your lips with a physical exfoliator, such as raw sugar. Gently rubbing the sugar over your lips buffs off dry and flaky skin.

NassifMD® Lip Sugar Scrub is an exfoliating lip scrub with a raw sugar cane base and nourishing, hydrating ingredients, including:

• Sunflower seed oil to soothe and hydrate
• Jojoba seed oil to protect and moisturize
• Organic coconut oil acts as a natural anti-microbial
• Vitamin E to protect the delicate lip barrier

How Often Should You Exfoliate Your Lips?

Exfoliate your lips once or twice per week as part of your skincare routine to improve your lips’ skin barrier and appearance and help your other lip care products do their jobs. Take advantage of this step if you have dry lips!

Step 2: Hydrate & Plump

As you would use a hydrating serum on your face, the same goes for your lips to improve volume and plumpness.

NassifMD® Hydro-Screen for Lips is similar to the best-selling NassifMD® Hydro-Screen Serum, but specifically supports the unique, delIan Shiellicate skin on the lips. The fast results you’ll obtain with this lip serum involve two primary active ingredients: ceramides and hyaluronic acid.

Ceramides

Ceramides are natural lipid molecules in the lips and all skin that help maintain skin structure and barrier function. An enhanced barrier decreases water loss and improves skin hydration. Research suggests ceramides are particularly helpful for treating dry and rough lips.

NassifMD® Hydro-Screen for Lips contains NP, AP, EOP, and phytosphingosine, natural ceramides found in the outer layers of the lips to renew and hydrate.

Hyaluronic Acid

NassifMD® Hydro-Screen for Lips also contains hyaluronic acid, the most well-known skincare ingredient to improve hydration. Hyaluronic acid decreases with age but topical products easily replaced it.

Hyaluronic acid helps pull water into the deeper layers of skin and keep it there, improving skin hydration and volume, decreasing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, and supporting a healthy skin barrier. Hyaluronic acid also works synergistically with other active ingredients in a formula.

Learn more about this popular skin and lip care ingredient here.

Why You Should Avoid Excessive Lip Licking

Let’s face it, lip licking is a bad habit. We think licking our lips increases hydration, but it has the opposite effect and leads to more dryness. Excessive lip licking can also cause bacteria or yeast from your mouth to grow on your lips, leading to “lip licking dermatitis” and red, cracked, painful lips.

If you have the urge to lick your lips, use a lip balm to moisturize instead.

Step 3: Protect

A quality lip balm is step 3 of your lip care routine. Use a lip balm to seal in moisture after your lip serum. A lip balm can also contain SPF to protect your lips from the sun. Reapply as often as needed throughout the day. 

Ingredients to Look for in Lip Balm

NassifMD® Hydrating Lip Balm contains several soothing and nourishing ingredients, including emollient oils and vitamin E, making it an ideal lip balm any time of year.

Nourishing Oils

Nourishing oils act as emollients, leaving a protective film on the skin and delivering nutrients to heal and moisturize the lips. NassifMD® Hydrating Lip Balm includes several high-quality, nourishing oils:

• Sunflower oil is rich in vitamin E, moisturizes, and helps restore soft skin.
• Jojoba oil is soft, conditioning, moisturizing, and supports the lip barrier.
• Mango seed butter is rich in oleic acid (also found in olive oil) to soothe dry, irritated lips and improve comfort.
• Meadowfoam seed oil is moisturizing and beneficial for dry, cracked lips.
• Hemp seed oil (cannabis sativa seed oil) is high in omega-3 fatty acids to condition and protect the lips.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E is found naturally in many plants, especially seeds, and is an incredible addition to any lip care product. Vitamin E is an antioxidant and protects the delicate lip skin from free radical damage caused by UV radiation, pollution, and other exposures.

NassifMD® Hydrating Lip Balm provides vitamin E from sunflower oil and has added vitamin E for extra protection and to preserve the nourishing oils in the product naturally.

Do Lips Need Sunscreen?

In addition to nourishing oils and antioxidants, including vitamin E, use a lip balm with SPF for sun protection. Interestingly, evidence suggests that using SPF on the lips also improves hydration.

Of course, we think the best lip balm for daily use with SPF is NassifMD® Hydrating Lip Balm! In addition to the quality ingredients and proven benefits outlined above. It also contains SPF 15 in a sheer application. Wear it bare or apply lipstick or gloss on top. It’s also vegan, cruelty-free, and gluten-free.

Try this simple 3-step process to care for your lips as you care for the rest of your skin. Exfoliate a couple of times per week, use a lip-specific hydrating serum, and follow with an emollient SPF lip balm as often as needed. Then, get ready for plump, smooth, moisturized lips!

References

1. Kim, H., Lee, M., Park, S. Y., Kim, Y. M., Han, J., & Kim, E. (2019).  Age-related changes in lip morphological and physiological characteristics in Korean women. Skin research and technology : official journal of International Society for Bioengineering and the Skin (ISBS) [and] International Society for Digital Imaging of Skin (ISDIS) [and] International Society for Skin Imaging (ISSI), 25(3), 277–282.
2. Borodzicz, S., Rudnicka, L., Mirowska-Guzel, D., & Cudnoch-Jedrzejewska, A. (2016). The role of epidermal sphingolipids in dermatologic diseases.Lipids in health and disease, 15, 13.
3. Tamura, E., Ishikawa, J., Yasuda, Y., & Yamamoto, T. (2021). The efficacy of synthetic pseudo-ceramide for dry and rough lips.International journal of cosmetic science, 43(2), 158–164.
4. Juncan, A. M., Moisă, D. G., Santini, A., Morgovan, C., Rus, L. L., Vonica-Țincu, A. L., & Loghin, F. (2021). Advantages of Hyaluronic Acid and Its Combination with Other Bioactive Ingredients in Cosmeceuticals.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland), 26(15), 4429.
5. Fonseca, A., Jacob, S. E., & Sindle, A. (2020). Art of prevention: Practical interventions in lip-licking dermatitis.International journal of women's dermatology, 6(5), 377–380.
6. López-Jornet, P., Camacho-Alonso, F., & Rodríguez-Espin, A. (2010). Study of lip hydration with application of photoprotective lipstick: influence of skin phototype, size of lips, age, sex and smoking habits.Medicina oral, patologia oral y cirugia bucal, 15(3), e445–e450.