Not necessarily. It may have have started with repeated lip licking/biting. For me personally I have to take into account my emotional nature. I used to suffer a lot from social anxiety, a very nervous child actually. The trouble is that the intial trauma that I caused has never been left alone. Being a sensitive person I always worry about my appearance. It would not have been possible for me to have allowed this to scab over when I should have, hence why I'm still dealing with it now. For you to say that for a person to pick there lips there must have been skin hanging down.. not really no. An interior problem? Maybe that's how it started, who knows. I have dietary issues, a lot doesn't agree with me. That's not to say that there is some missing pieces of the puzzle that needs to be found here. I believe that the damage was done, various factors fell into place for the skin of my lips to become broken/ irritated. There is no magic wand. My diet has been great for many years and I notice absolutely no correlation between what I eat/when I eat and lip peeling. You can see me disagreeing with daniel miller about this, he was right and I was wrong, but it took for him to say various things to me to make me realise diet is not at all related.