Re: A plan to cure our Exfoliative Cheilitis - A realistic approach to the 'leave it alone' method

I will reply to you both Daniel and jsl in the same post.


Firstly thanks for taking the time to reply to my post. I think however you have mistaken or misunderstood my method, perhaps my understanding of the "leave-it-alone" method is impartial.

I was under the impression that the leave-it-alone method was in its purity just not peeling the lips, but now recalling when I looked at your site years ago Daniel I see it also includes not applying anything to the lips.

The only thing I am making a staple in my strategy however is leaving them alone as in not peeling the lips. Anything one wants to inhibit other than peeling is additional to the method, such as using different toothpaste, drinking with a straw, creating your own moisturiser etc etc. Personally I do not encourage or advise any of these extra tips, I don't think they make a huge difference or are worth the effort (other than avoiding saucy lip-staining foods on drier lip days).

One thing I will say however is that I totally agree that we must keep our lips moisturised. You must not lose sight of what the aim of our lip recovery is: returning our lips to their original soft, supple, 'moisture-retaining' form.

I think the confusion is that I see the problem and aim differently to you guys. I think you Daniel approached the problem by looking at what harm excessively using chapstick did to your lips, and then assumed that the solution was in throwing out moisturisers entirely since it seemed the lips was becoming dependent on them.

Whilst it might be true that our lips were becoming dependent on X moisturiser, I think the bigger issue is that chapstick is the lip product of Satan. [Actually, (I think) even I recall using some red chapstick-like lip balm waaay back.] It's possible that certain moisturisers, or perhaps the excess-ivity by which we used them made the lips ability to retain moisture redundant.

I don't think that moisturisers are bad, our body releases their own natural moisturisers in different places. The way I see it, which might not be scientifically correct, is that our lips have become weakened. The skin all over our body sheds and renews cyclically, our lips in particular I think I read (are meant to) shed every 30 days. So every 30 days a healthy person has new lips.

The way I am approaching the problem is by extending the lifespan of our lips. Perhaps, the lips become dry enough to peel after a certain amount of time as our body thinks, because of our previous habits, that it doesn't need to be soft for that length of time since we're gonna take the skin off. If we gradually increase how long we keep our lips unpeeled, maybe the body will think that it needs to be soft and moist for a longer length of time, and readjust the life span of the skin on the lips.

That makes sense doesn't it, right? That why on Earth should the body keep the lips soft, or 'alive', when we are just going to peel them off anyway? By argument of efficiency, the body's doing the exact right thing. It has no idea of the self-conscious feelings of the conscious brain who cares what other people think. Our cells do not realise our social situations. All it knows is that it is inefficient to keep that area soft when it is going to come off.