This Holy Grail Combination Saved My Tattered, Chapped Lips
A lifetime of dryness, flaking, and chronic skin picking finally resolved with these steps?
I have always had aggressively dry skin. I remember one particularly cold winter in the 8th grade when many of my classmates were starting to get their first pimples.
There I was, in the bathroom splashing cold water on my face and scrubbing with a paper towel to try to remove the white and red flakey patches.
No one had ever explained to me that it might be a good idea to moisturize your face after washing. All I had ever heard of was that I might get clogged pores if I didn’t wash morning and night. At the time, my dry, red, patchy skin was embarrassing but it sparked a lifelong love of skincare, and in addition to moisturizers came lip treatments.
Along with living in continental dry climates with harsh freezing winters most of my life I also have chronically dry skin, even as an adult. This dryness has always extended not only from my face and body but to my lips as well.
My lips have always been an ongoing battle. I am admittedly a bit scatterbrained at times — constantly losing lip chaps in couch cushions, beneath beds, and under car seats. I am also bad about reapplying throughout the day. I work in a job where I am mostly on my feet, and often dehydrated. Unfortunately, with my dry, and often at times to-the-point of flakey lips I tend to chronically pick at the pieces leaving my lips scabbed and raw in areas.
So I have extremely dry, cracked, sore, picked-at lips. You heard my deep dark secrets (hard to hide given they are on my face but nonetheless), so now what do I do about them?
Well, if you are me, these are the things you try unsuccessfully.
- Hydrate More
Attempt to drink more water, this is only a small part of the puzzle and isn’t the whole story. Staying especially hydrated internally never really helped a ton with this, but it definitely didn’t harm any.
2. For The Love of All That is Holy Stop Picking
For a while I blamed myself. Maybe I was just perpetuating the cycle? Is it a chicken or the egg situation? Are my lips so cracked because I keep picking?
The answer is no – but the picking does not help. When I took a break from picking (momentarily switching my pent-up energies to my cuticles instead), my lips were less scabby (sorry!) but still just as peel-y and flaky as ever.
3. Scour the Internet for Everyone’s Holy Grail Products – Try Them All, They Help a Little Bit
Like the title says, I’ve read every beauty blogger/vlogger, Reddit thread, magazine article, Sephora review recommendation of the best lip products to try.
Including but not limited to the following: Bite Beauty agave lip mask, First Aid Beauty lip therapy, Labello lip chap, Blistex, Carmex, Aquaphor, Lanolips, Bag Balm (smells like barnyard FYI), Pawpaw Cream, and many others that I can’t recall off the top of my head.
Most of them brought momentary relief with limited success and require frequent reapplication, something that I found given my sleep schedule, memory, and work-life were difficult to accommodate.
So, what finally solved my issue? well, it’s due in part to a combination of two products.
Amid another cold, dry winter I was reading a Reddit skincare thread, and again recently saw the idea pop up on TikTok. It was enough to push me to finally try (the off-puttingly named) slugging.
What is Slugging?
Slugging is a process by where you complete your usual nighttime skin routine with serums and moisturizer of choice, and then, as the last step, lather on a very thin layer of either Vaseline or Aquaphor all over your face.
The Vaseline or Aquaphor acts as a skin protectant, a barrier preventing any further water loss and allowing the skin to repair overnight. The only irritating thing was that as a stomach sleeper that moves around a lot I was relegated to sleeping on my back to prevent my now extremely greasy face from getting all over the pillow and into my hair. After trying this one night I noticed the skin on my face was hydrated and dewy in the morning.
Then the idea struck me, maybe the reason I don’t have any success with lip products is for this same reason. My lips also need a protective barrier to lock in the moisture.
Slugging for Lips?
So I applied the principles of slugging to my lip routine. I haven’t experimented with other lip products yet but I imagine the success could be similar.
Right now I am using Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask with Vaseline layered on top.
On its own, the Laneige product was good, with frequent applications. Without applying often, for me, the effects were short-lived.
But, the combination of Laneige and Vaseline?
My lips for the first time in the middle of winter are not cracked and are not flaking. They are smooth and hydrated.
I am shocked. Only took me 30+ years and many dollars spent on lip products to figure it out.
Now, this slugging-for-lips concept is something that I will continue to experiment with. Maybe other combinations will be more successful? I have my eye on Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask with Lanolips (an ointment-like product) layered on top – two of the previous well-performing products in my collection.
For now, you will find me putting my now smooth lips to good use with a great new lipstick- a concept that was completely outside the realm of possibility before. Would love to hear how you beat the winter dryness for skincare or lips– you know, I’m always on the hunt for the next great product.
