Finally on the Path to Healing these zombie lips

Hello Everyone, this is my first time posting here after lurking this forum for years. I have had exfoliative cheilitis from Jan 2011 to roughly the beginning of May this year(2020). It has been a crazy journey but I'm finally on the path to victory and wanted to share what I've learned over the years battling this curse. First the "tldr" or "too long did not read" is I've finally come to a point where my peeling and build up has completely stopped but I want to continue this treatment for a few more months before coming off of it and calling it good.

Now to the long part. From what I've read over the years and my own experience exfoliative cheilitis ranges from mild to severe(my problem was closer to mild) and could be caused by many different things. I live in the United States so keep that in mind when I mention certain things.


Over 9 years I have tried the following to fix my problem(none of them worked):
* drink more water
* Gluten free diet
* multivitamins
* liver flush
* probiotics
* SLS and fluoride free toothpaste
* blood tested for common food allergy
* patch tested for common contact dermatitis(this will come into play later)
* blood tested for sjorgens and celiacs
* Nystatin
* Hydrocortisone %1
* tacrolimus(this will come into play later)
* leaving the deadskin on as long as possible
* applied plain vaseline to my lips every hour every day(I did this for 2 weeks before giving up)
* tried going a couple of days with no vaseline and just water
* I got a biopsy but it did not reveal anything
* various chapsticks(burts bees, dr. dans cortibalm, lanolin, etc...)

I visited MANY dermatologist over those years. I remember one doctor looking at my lips and saying "I don't see anything wrong, just drink more water it's dry here in Colorado". For crying out loud I knew more about this problem than those clowns. I was given tacrolimus by another doctor and tacrolimus reduced the peeling but never got rid of it. I would peel at night and in the morning.

Fortunately I found a dermatologist, who finally listened to me. She said it looks like some sort of chronic reaction to something and after telling her my history she said I needed to go see an allergen specialist. If you look in the list above I had gotten a patch test for COMMON contact dermatitis however the one that this new doctor gave me was completely comprehensive. The results came back after a week and I found out I was allergic to:

* Citrus
* Octyl Gallate
* Tert-Butylhydroquinone also called TBHQ

Finally I had a potential answer. Citrus is easy to avoid it's foods like oranges, etc.. but the other two were really hard to avoid. The other two are artificial preservatives found in nearly EVERY food that is processed. What makes it even harder is that companies DO NOT have to list these ingredients on their labels and almost NEVER do. I found more hope when I came across this blog post:
https://frugalkite.com/gallate-allergy-and-peeling-lips-my-search-for-help/
the author seemed to have a similar problem to me as well as being allergic to one of the things I'm allergic to. Basically to avoid those two substances I have to eat USDA organically! Apparently for foods to be labeled USDA organic they cannot have artificial preservatives . So I started shopping at Trader Joe's. This month I went back to using tacrolimus along with avoiding the substances above(I did not do this the first time I used tacrolimus because I did not know I had any allergies). My regimen this month has been this all while eating organically:

1. Aquaphor in the morning
2. Aquaphor after rinsing my mouth after lunch
3. Tacrolimus after dinner and brushing my teeth
4. Aquaphor after washing off the tacrolimus before going to bed

That is it, so far this month I have had no peeling an no build up for the first time in 9 years. I plan on continuing the use of tacrolimus for 3 months before testing with just aquaphor and organic foods for another 3 months. Lastly I will test with just eating organically with no aquaphor and see If i peel anymore.

There is hope everyone, never give up!
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