Thank you for your welcomes!

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I disagree with Calmvoice who wrote that "it could be none of those things," because what people on this forum describe that they are suffering from is definitely one of these things, and probably it is *most* of these things.

These medical terms are descriptions of what is happening with the lips, they do not give specific *reasons* for what is happening. Therefore, if your lips are peeling, scaling, irritated, raw, etc. - your condition definitely can be described by one of those terms.

That doesn't mean that the reason for yours is the reason for mine. However, logically, like most medical conditions, there are probably a few main reasons behind most cases, with some outlying odd reasons that only affect a small percentage of sufferers.

If the medical community and the sufferers used the same terminology for this, or at least realized that there were a handful of different terms that are being used to describe the same thing, I think it would be easier to find information on it, discuss it, and count the true numbers of sufferers (which relates to how seriously it's taken, how much money is spent on research, etc.)

Also, many of the people who never know what to call this and who figure out a way to cure their condition, or who just "grow out of it" or whatever, also continue along in silence, not knowing that there are thousands of other people out there with this who might be helped by learning about their homemade experimentation, what worked and what didn't.

It is so hard to find advice and answers because looking this condition up, even with the fantastic resources of the internet, is a huge pain. I imagine most cheilitis sufferers give up trying to figure out what is happening (even if they seek medical advice), and just accept that there is no answer and that they are very unusual.

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The reason some of you might think that it's a young person's condition, whereas the author of the medical dictionary definition of cheilitis whom I quoted in my first post calls it a condition mainly affecting the elderly, is because we are exposed to different populations not only by whom we interact with, but also by whom the doctors we consult see and by whom those doctors *believe* and disbelieve (there seems to be a fair number of doctor reports doubting that younger people really have anything wrong; positing that perhaps they have OCD or something -- this "factitious" cheilitis they report, like that poor lad in Indonesia who was kept in the hospital for 10 days and they never saw him touching his lips, but since they couldn't figure anything else out, they didn't rule out that he was secretly injuring his lips in private), etc. They are more likely to believe that an elderly person who gets this for the first time is not somehow self-harming, rather than a young person whom they might not take so seriously.

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I don't think there is anything weird about my getting this in my 40s, and it's definitely due to some change in my internal or external environment, not due to any kind of rubbing or licking or drooling or whatever that some doctors think that people privately do. I've treated my lips the way I always have, yet they've suddenly flipped out.

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So if anyone has other medical terms for this lip condition, please post them here.

This could be a term that your doctor diagnosed you with, terms that you've seen online or in medical journals. It could also be sub-type terms (like "angular" versus "exfoliative" stomatitis, or the "granul-something" term, etc.)

Hi Lipschitz,

If "-osis means any abnormality" then I think it is perfectly logical to state that we all have cheilosis (which means abnormality of the lip surface, apparently) AND stomatosis (which means abnormality of the surface of the mouth area, including the lips, apparently).

I'm not sure why some people bristle at the idea of having sufferers and doctors use ONE overarching medical term for this that is all-encompassing and easily recognizable and searchable. It doesn't mean we aren't each individual and unique in our suffering! ;-)

"Peeling lips" isn't any more accurate or poetic than "cheilosis", and if sufferers prefer that to one of the several perfectly-decent medical terms used for "chronic, weird, abnormal lip stuff is happening to this patient" in medical diagnoses, this makes substantive information on the topic a whole lot harder to find on the internet, at least for people who are stumbling around on their own and trying to get answers for themselves. I think it took me 3 hours of searching under "cracked lips", "chapped lips", and "dry lips" to even see the word "cheilitis" for the first time. I then ignored it for a while in my searches, not realizing what it was, because it doesn't SOUND applicable. I didn't think to type the word "peeling" into the search engine. I would have searched under "flaking", "irritated", "allergic", "sensitive", "burning" before that.

Ah yes, dear Schitz, I did see your post, the one with the links to the recommended threads, a few days ago! I spent a long time looking at each one. I was glad to find that post right at the start of my acquaintance with this forum.