Re: peeling lips (off topic)

Hi, I have had exfoliative cheilitis for 8 years now, im 22 now and I recently took three weeks off to try and let my lips heal up(or so I thought). These are my opinions, theories, and conclusions. All criticism is welcome ;D.

For the first week I put aloe on them several times a day and at night. The skin got very thick and fell off in about three days. The skin underneath looked much healthier, but more or less the same. After the new skin was exposed to air it was only a matter of hours before it started to dry up and turn hard again. I thought this might be part of the healing process so I continued putting aloe on my lips and letting them peel on there own for two more cycles. The same thing happened, the new skin would just dry up and the whole the would start over again.

After the first week or so with no real results, I decided to stop putting aloe on my lips and let them be natural. The skin on my lips got hard and thick and without any moisturizers, did not want to fall off. After about 4 days some of the hard skin finally started to come off and revealed worse results than with aloe on. The skin underneath had another layer of dead skin under the layer that just peeled off! I decided to let them be hoping this was normal. The next day the sections that had peeled were all hard and dry again. It was clear to me that this was not working.

Now at the beginning of the second week, hitting rock bottom at this failed attempt, it was clear there was only one option left. I had previously tried aquafor on my lips for three weeks one year before. My lips did not peel with this goop on(enough Vaseline did the same thing)but stayed the same for the entire three weeks. This lead me to believe that only minimal healing was ever going to take place and looking through old pictures recently, I realized my lips looked exactly the same as they always had(before they started peeling).

I have been a lip balm addict for the entire duration of my peeling lips! I decided to stop using any kind of lip balm EVER! Stop cold turkey! Do babies need lip balm? No. Do kids need lip balm?. No. This is my problem. I had a dependency on lip balm, when ever my lips were dry or felt dry I would plaster over them to relieve the feeling. This was only ever making them worse. Lip balm also seems to make to skin softer and more open to moisture loss. Lips without lip balm instead are slightly chapped closing off immediate moisture loss. Chapping is maybe the bodies way of stopping some moisture loss. Sure they looked better with lip balm but I was depriving them of water! Through the use of lip balm I believe I have forgotten that naturally you lick, suck or whatever as means to get your bodies natural lip moisturizer saliva to your lips. It also doesn’t help to read everywhere you look that you should not lick your lips. Some people have to and maybe some don’t I guess. Old pictures revealed me sucking on my lips when I was young! Just watch people mouths on television and see. The peeling on my lips has always only been half of each upper and lower, this section is very similar to a mucous membrane or maybe even is a mucous membrane. The other part(which has never peeled) is normal skin that can hold moisture by itself. The type of lips I was born with requires me to get saliva the this membrane.

Now that I freed myself of all the anxiety associated with applying lip balm and lip healing experiments, it is only a matter of time until I remember how and when to lick/suck my lips properly. Through trial and error and the passing of time, I will eventually figure out what is for most people like blinking there eyes, the unconscious behavior of maintaining your lips naturally.

I am on my third day of lips o' natural. I seem to be over licking/sucking on them right now and am trying stop the unnecessary licks just to make them look better( freshly licked lips look alot better than chapped lips, but this is wrong wrong wrong, I have to stop this, damn my obsessive personality!)Too much saliva is just as bad as no saliva ;( I am trying to feel out when a sloppy lick is needed or when to pucker them up, suck them or when to just let them be. Lips do not have to be constantly wet. The tongue can also be very abrasive so I will lick gently to get the saliva there. The peeling has been minimal, and seems to be getting better with each night. At night something happens and I awake to soft lips in the morning? I have noticed that with all those past nights of plastering lip balm on the majority of it gets sucked up into the mouth by morning, so maybe something along these lines is happening. I must except that chapping is a part of normal lip life and it is only a matter of time until I remember the forgotten balance.




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