What casues Dry and Cracked Lips?

Like the rest of our skin, the skin on our lips deteriorates over time especially as we enter middle age, and everything slows down.  More importantly the skin on the lips is thinner and  without hair folicles, sweat glands or sebaceous glands. This means lips dry out quickly as they can't lubricate or protect themselves. They need help from you.

And becasue the skin on the lips is thinner blood vessels underneath are more visible and hence why our lips are redder / pinker than our facial skin.

The same process that prompts the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles around the face can also lead to the thinning and sensitising of the skin on the lips. Ageing also leaves your lips more vulnerable to attack from a number of elements which can further dry and damage the lip tissue.


Dry Cracked Lips are usually casued by:

• Weather (sun, wind and cold are all culprits in the chapping process)
• Environment and dehydration -modern central heating systems strip essential moisture from skin and air causing skin to dry unnaturally.
• Constant licking of the lips also know as the "wetting and drying cycle"
• Illness (often the constant blowing of a streaming cold during a cold can precipitate an attack of chapping)
• Underlying medical conditions or taking meidcation can also dry the lips out - if this is the case for you talk to your GP

For some an initial bit of lip drying and damage is simply the first step of a painful and drawn out process that can see lips splitting and bleeding as they develop fissures (medical term for splitting) and cracks that do not seem to go away with conventional chapped lip treatments. And of course as we use our lips constantly for gossiping, eating and expression dry lips on the mend so often go back to square one and split again if not cared for.