I drink lots of water, wear lip balm for the winter. Why did I get chapped lips, I now have a cut down the center of my bottom lip, i did everything right! Now I have to be extra careful to not smile or show any emotion on my face while you heal. — More Painful Than I Realized

This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2013.

Join the Conversation

44 Comments

  1. What type of lip balm do you use, OB?

    The only lip balm that really does work is blistex in the blue tube. If you’re not using it — go get some now! It’s really cheap and will soothe your lip split. I have tons of lip balm and the only thing that helps when my lips are super dry and chapped is the blue blistex — because it’s medicated.

    Hope this helps!

    Reply
  2. Reply
  3. Reply

  4. Never tried burt’s bees. I will now on your recommendation PG.

    Fuck it…I’ll do what Ivan suggested too because he hasn’t lead me astray yet. Don’t let me down Ivan.

    Reply
  5. Reply
  6. Reply
  7. Reply
  8. Reply

  9. good old vaseline, but only at night when my snoring sends blasts of hot dry air flubbering past my lips.

    used to use chapstick-type stuff but got a monkey on my back from it. i had those little tubes squirrelled everywhere, panic attacks if i couldn’t reach one within 10 feet. i read that they had a drying agent to force you to keep using. go figure, corporate shenanigans. so i went cold turkey on it and went from constant dry lips with bouts of chapping/cold sores to normal people lips.

    Reply

  10. You may need to get stitches to heal that lower lip. Used to live in the Eastern Townships in Quebec, my bottom lip split in January (way .back in the eighties) and never completely healed until 6 months later. Everytime you smile, it splits again. Very painful. Ask your doc if this is something you can do. Hope it does not take as long to heal as mine did

    Reply

  11. it can be brutal, i remember smiling in ontario with a big fissure on my bottom lip. it can take forever to heal plus it’s hard not to smile

    Reply
  12. Reply

  13. blistex- is like crack for ur lips..once applied you have to keep applying or your lips will literaly calluce and be worse than before because of the chemicals in that crap. burts bees is really awesome.
    actually petrolium (vaseline) is only a barrier.. you should use Burts Bees, THEN vaseline over it to keep it on there 🙂
    oh and as for the chapped lip.. odd but true: use a bit of Tamanu oil and a VERY small amount of cortisone cream to speed up your healing.

    Reply

  14. Ask D. Mercola, OB. I believe he has a forum on his website somewhere. He’s a doctor after all!

    Ivan: Ahhh! Me public.

    Reply
  15. Reply
  16. Reply

  17. zzz i think it’s usually just a ‘womanly’ issue because women start using that crack-4-your-lips. guys usually don’t. if you start, you have to keep using it.
    so burts bees is now owned by clorox eh?

    Reply
  18. Reply
  19. Reply

  20. SOLUTION: READ SOME GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

    “Now I have to be extra careful not to smile or to show any emotion on my face while you heal.” More Painful Than I realized

    I think the solution to the problem of not smiling will be readily acquired by reading German philosophy, particularly the modern German existentialists. For example, here is a brief excerpt from Martin Heidegger’s “The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics”:

    ‘The being that exists is man. Man alone exists. Rocks are, but they do not exist. Trees are, but they do not exist. Horses are, but they do not exist. Angels are, but they do not exist. God is, but he does not exist. The proposition ‘man alone exists’ does not mean by any means that man alone is a real being whose Being is distinguished by the open-standing standing-in the unconcealedness of Being, from Being, in Being. The existential nature of man is the reason why man can represent beings as such, and why he can be conscious of them. All consciousness presupposes ecstatically understood existence as the ‘essentia’ of man – ‘essentia’ meaning as that as which man is present insofar as he is man.’

    Good luck and Godspeed!

    A pleasure as always.

    Cheerio!

    Reply

  21. Blistex is the best if you use it every once in awhile but Carmex is less addictive to you lips. I suggest Blistex first thing in the morning followed by Carmex.

    I know because I was on 80 mg of accutane A DAY! (back when dermatologists didn’t know how bad that was for you), off and on for 4 years.

    Reply
  22. Reply
  23. Reply
  24. Reply
  25. Reply
  26. Reply

  27. my niece gave me a cool locally made spock ornament and the bear gave me a hermes ornament “i want to be a dentist”

    Reply

  28. paingirl my girlfriend came out of HMV yesterday with a Martian Bobblehead, from Mars Attacks …. AAAAKKKKKK AAAAAKKKKK !
    IT was a tough decission for her seeing as they also had a stainless steel Star Trek Enterprise Pizza cutter, the ‘saucer’ part was the cutting wheel !
    did I mention the Yoda chrismas lights, death Star planetariums etc
    & all of it was on sale …very hard on her ~:D

    Reply
  29. Reply

  30. good choice, novelty pizza cutters don’t work well plus i love that movie, tim burton is bat shit crazy

    Reply

  31. Pure vitamin e oil, best thing for your skin it heals pimples cuts burns freshens your complexion and definitely keeps your lips nice and healthy. Buy a cheap roll on lip gloss and fill it with the vitamin e oil, apply it all day whenever your lips feel dry. It also works a charm on diaper rash 🙂

    Reply
  32. Reply
  33. Reply

  34. Well, I got lost when lip goo turned to Tardis and Hermie… But Burt’s Bees is awesome… And a little grapeseed oil at night will do the trick… Pg did you really only smile ONCE in Ontario?

    Reply
  35. Reply
  36. Reply
  37. Reply

  38. ——-
    The only lip balm that really does work is blistex in the blue tube
    ——-

    I think different people react differently to different lip goo. The one that works for me is the Aveda lip balm I get where I get my hairsdid. It doesn’t lick off quickly, and I love the notreallya flavour. And the tube seems to last forever. Good value and a good product, in my humble.
    It IS hard to stop licking your lips, isn’t it LL Cool J?

    PisP

    Reply

  39. I’ have this problem every year — because I’m NOT doing the right things.. I’m always dehydrated because I live on coffee. There is a product called ZIM’S CRACK CREAM.
    They make it in hand cream and lip balm styles. Doctor’s and nurses use it because their hands crack from the constant overwashing, and oil field and outdoor workers use it too. Lawton’s drug store. I have tried everything, and this heals in 1 day. Every time.
    Sincerely, still smiling caffeine addict!

    Reply

  40. ^^ crack cream! tee hee.

    better than ‘hidden valley lubricants’

    neutrogena norwegian formula hand cream, in the tube, is good for chapped hands, can heal overnight. ex-bf garbageman used it, his hands took a kicking all year.

    Reply

  41. you lack essential fatty acids, do you eat margarine( really bad) Get some oils in your diet, Olive Flax etc

    Reply

  42. I drink water like a fish and it doesn’t mean sweet fuck all when it comes to my lips being sore and chapped. It all depends on the weather or environment I’m in. When I spent a summer in Quebec, the air was so dry that I had to change my skin care routine and I had to use blistex for a good few weeks until my skin acclimated. Usually I only have to put some on three or four times during the whole of a winter season, here in NS.

    So, sometimes it just depends on the weather.

    I also don’t tend to use much of anything on my lips. Despite having a huge collection of glosses and lip sticks, I hardly ever have to, or even bother to, put anything on my lips.

    And the lip smackers I bought for a buck at the dollarama work just as well as Burts. When my lips are sore, the only thing that helps is whatever they put in the medicated blistex. Plus Burts is expensive as heck.

    Reply
  43. Reply
  44. Reply
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *