Lip Chapping

WHEN TO SEE YOUR DOCTOR

* Your chapped lips develop severe cracks and fissures.

What Your Symptom Is Telling You

If your rough, peeling chapped lips could talk (on their own, that is), they'd beg for two things: moisture and something to seal the moisture in. But how do lips lose their moisture? If you have a common habit?lip-licking?you have a sure setup for chapping. Here's how it happens.

In dry air?a centrally heated house in winter, for example?moisture evaporates from your lips. Unconsciously, you notice that dry feeling and lick your lips to wet them again. Then, when this wetness evaporates, it robs your lips of even more moisture, so you feel the urge to lick again. A sunburn on the lips can also tempt you to lick and cause them to chap.

Another common cause of chapped lips is an allergic reaction to dyes in lipstick.

Some people have chapping mostly in the corners of their mouths, and the cause may be the shape of their lips. If your lips turn down at the corners when your face is relaxed, saliva may collect in the corners and cause the outside edges of your lips to chap.

Symptom Relief

Chapped lips can be irritating and unsightly. The good news? You can almost always cure them yourself.

Soak to hydrate. To give your sore, chapped lips the ultimate treatment, use daily cool salt water compresses, suggests Caroline Koblenzer, M.D., a clinical associate professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

"Use one teaspoon salt to one pint water. Soak a washcloth in the solution and lay it over your lips. Keep it cool and moist for a while, then pat dry," she says. You might try doing this just before going to bed. Do it daily for one week.

Seal in the moisture. Right after the compress, apply a thick coat of an emollient ointment like Vaseline or a lip balm containing waxes or lanolin to hold the moisture in, says Alan R. Shalita, M.D., professor and chairman of dermatology at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn.

Step up to cortisone. If a week of compresses and emollients don't do the trick, you can add over-the-counter 1 percent hydrocortisone ointment to your regimen, says Tor Shwayder, M.D., a pediatric dermatologist at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Use the hydrocortisone under your emollient ointment, he suggests. Try this for two weeks.

Don't lick the problem. It's tough to stop licking your lips because the behavior is mostly unconscious, like blinking. But stopping is the first step in healing, says Dr. Shwayder. And he says the first step in stopping is just knowing that lip-licking is causing the problem.

Change lipstick. If you suspect that an allergy to an ingredient in your lipstick is causing your lips to chap, Dr. Koblenzer offers this easy home allergy test: "Put a little dab under an adhesive dressing on your inner arm and leave it there for 48 hours," she says. "If you're truly allergic to something in the lipstick, you'll have an itchy reaction."

Your other lipstick options? Either avoid using it altogether or opt for a hypoallergenic brand, she suggests.

Don't get burned. The delicate skin on your lips is easily damaged and chapped by sunburn, says Dr. Shalita. While you're developing the lip ointment habit, be sure to choose a lip balm that contains sunscreen, he suggests.