Winter = chapped lips = owie
Every winter, for as long as I can remember, I get really bad chapped lips. Last night I was over at Thursday night gaming night that a friend of mine hosts every week (EVERY week--holidays included) and my chapped lips split further and started to bleed. I had to keep a napkin with me and constantly, like a couple of times every minute, blot the blood off of my lips. It must have been disturbing to the people I was playing a game with. It hurts like hell. They hurt like hell constantly--not just when they've split. But when they split, they hurt worse.
I'm used to having to peel off pieces of dead skin from my lips--it sounds gross, but if I don't do it, the dead skin hardens into almost a callus, then it cracks and splits DEEP into my lip and causes a cut/sore that will last for weeks. So I'm diligent about removing the shreds of dead skin that shed off of my lips in the winter. But I feel like some sort of gross pariah doing it. And I feel like everyone is looking at my red, chapped, bloody, scabbed lips like I'm some sort of horror movie character.
I've heard that lip balm is bad for you, and that you should use coconut oil. Well, lucky me! I have a jar of coconut oil because I'd heard it was good for skin in gneral. Well, at the temps that we keep our house, the coconut oil is about the consistency of a candle. So I melted some and mixed it with some olive oil at the suggestion of someone online. I have it in a little plastic cup, like a medicine dispensing cup, and I rub it on my lips frequently... as soon as it hits the warmth of my lips, it turns to absolute liquid and then about 5 minutes later I can't even tell I ever put it on. I ordered some little tubs (they were really cheap) to put it in like a lip balm, and I'm going to make some more that is more coconut oil, less olive oil in the hopes that it won't go so liquid so fast...
In the meantime Dan is picking me up one of those Vaseline lip applicators on the way home from work. Maybe that will help for a while. Maybe I can put on the coconut oil for its healing/goodness properties, then a minute or two later, put on the Vaseline for its sealing properties, so my lips don't instantly dry out again. We'll see how it turns out. In the meantime--ouch. :(
I'm used to having to peel off pieces of dead skin from my lips--it sounds gross, but if I don't do it, the dead skin hardens into almost a callus, then it cracks and splits DEEP into my lip and causes a cut/sore that will last for weeks. So I'm diligent about removing the shreds of dead skin that shed off of my lips in the winter. But I feel like some sort of gross pariah doing it. And I feel like everyone is looking at my red, chapped, bloody, scabbed lips like I'm some sort of horror movie character.
I've heard that lip balm is bad for you, and that you should use coconut oil. Well, lucky me! I have a jar of coconut oil because I'd heard it was good for skin in gneral. Well, at the temps that we keep our house, the coconut oil is about the consistency of a candle. So I melted some and mixed it with some olive oil at the suggestion of someone online. I have it in a little plastic cup, like a medicine dispensing cup, and I rub it on my lips frequently... as soon as it hits the warmth of my lips, it turns to absolute liquid and then about 5 minutes later I can't even tell I ever put it on. I ordered some little tubs (they were really cheap) to put it in like a lip balm, and I'm going to make some more that is more coconut oil, less olive oil in the hopes that it won't go so liquid so fast...
In the meantime Dan is picking me up one of those Vaseline lip applicators on the way home from work. Maybe that will help for a while. Maybe I can put on the coconut oil for its healing/goodness properties, then a minute or two later, put on the Vaseline for its sealing properties, so my lips don't instantly dry out again. We'll see how it turns out. In the meantime--ouch. :(