Are our lips really dry? Or have we forgotten what normal lips feel like?

There was a time when balm had a simple job. Protect vulnerable skin.

It wasn't just for lips.

The word balm can be traced through Old French baume and Latin balsamum to the Greek balsamon, originally referring to aromatic plant resins. Over time, its meaning broadened to include preparations applied to the body to soothe, protect and to care for wounds and damaged skin.

Long before science explained epidermal barrier function, transepidermal water loss, ceramides or essential fatty acids, humans applied oils, fats, waxes and salves to vulnerable skin. The materials varied between cultures and regions, but the underlying principle was simple: cover vulnerable tissue, reduce exposure and water loss, and protect the surface while skin biology did the work of repair.

Lips are particularly vulnerable. They have a less effective protective barrier than facial skin, virtually no sebaceous glands and lose moisture rapidly. They are also repeatedly exposed to saliva, food and liquids.

Research comparing the lips with cheek skin found transepidermal water loss from the lips to be almost three times higher, while surface hydration was approximately one-third that of the cheek. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15030342/

For centuries, the solution was simple. Apply fat, oil or wax to help seal the surface.

This created a protective layer over the skin, reducing water loss and exposure of damaged  skin to further irritants while creating conditions in which the underlying tissue could restore itself.

Modern science confirms the practice established by observation. Research investigating oils and waxes found that increasing the occlusivity of a lip product improved lip hydration and roughness without requiring a particular "active" ingredient. The difference was the degree of occlusion. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31571236/

In skincare, a substance that forms a layer over the skin and reduces water loss is known as an occlusive. 

Balm worked because balm performed a function. It helped seal and protect the skin.

When functional balm became beauty

Lip cosmetics are not new. Humans have coloured and enhanced their lips for thousands of years.

What changed was something more subtle.

What once was lip care became cosmetic.

The word balm retained its associations with soothing, protecting and relief, while the products carrying the name increasingly acquired cosmetic attributes that had little to do with that original function.

Balm became flavoured, scented, tinted, glossy, cooling, tingling and plumping. Then came lip oils, scrubs, serums, masks, overnight treatments and increasingly elaborate promises of cosmetic transformation.

Somewhere between protecting lips and perfecting them, balm acquired an extraordinary number of additional roles and ingredients.

Balm became a cosmetic category, increasingly used not simply to protect lips but to modify their appearance and feel, often with ingredients capable of irritating the lip tissue.

Increasingly, ingredients could be chosen not for what vulnerable lip tissue required to maintain healthy function, but for what the cosmetic product promised: gloss, slip, colour, fragrance, plumping, fullness, flavour, texture and sensory experience.

The requirements of the cosmetic product began taking precedence over the requirements of the tissue it was supposed to protect.

And some of the ingredients found within the lip product category can themselves become part of the problem.

Lipsticks, balms, glosses and other lip cosmetics are recognised causes of irritant and allergic contact cheilitis the medical term for inflammation of the lips.

A systematic review of allergic contact dermatitis associated with lip-care cosmetics identified castor oil, benzophenone-3, gallates, waxes and colophony among the most commonly reported causative ingredients. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37904533

Benzophenone-3 is a UV filter. Gallates are synthetic antioxidants used to help the product against oxidation. Propyl gallate in particular is a recognised contact sensitiser and has been associated with allergic contact cheilitis from lip cosmetics. In one series of 46 patients sensitised to gallates, cheilitis was the most common presentation and lipstick the most common sensitising product. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18035026 

Colophony, also known as rosin, is a resin obtained from pine trees.

Castor oil is particularly interesting.

Its unusual fatty acid profile is dominated by ricinoleic acid, which gives castor oil physical properties particularly useful in lip cosmetics, including viscosity, slip and gloss. However ricinoleic acid is a recognised cause of allergic cheilitis from lip cosmetics. https://dermnetnz.org/topics/contact-reactions-to-lipsticks-and-other-lipcare-products 

Simply put, castor oil is valued in lip cosmetics for what it brings to the product and the cosmetic changes of the lips such as gloss and shine not because ricinoleic acid is required to protect, repair or maintain healthy lip barrier function. Ricinoleic acid is non native to human skin and a known contact allergen.

Dermatologists also recognise fragrances, flavourings, preservatives, lanolin and other substances as potential causes of allergic contact cheilitis. https://dermnetnz.org/topics/contact-reactions-to-lipsticks-and-other-lipcare-products 

This creates an interesting cycle.

A lip product coats irritated lips and immediately makes them feel smoother and more comfortable. But if something within that product is also irritating or sensitising the individual, inflammation can continue. The lips again feel dry or uncomfortable, so the product is reapplied. 

Dryness → Application → Relief → Irritation → Application → Relief → Irritation → Application → Relief → ↻ Repeated over and over.

The product appears to solve the problem every time it is applied while potentially helping perpetuate it. Few stop to question whether the lip product itself is the source of the inflammation 

We swallow the ingredients in products applied to the lips

Lip products also differ in one unavoidable respect. Some of the product is inevitably ingested.

We lick our lips, eat, drink and talk. With any product applied to the lips, some will eventually enter the mouth. That makes checking the ingredients and their functional necessity particularly relevant. This includes products called lip balm, because the name balm no longer represents balm's original protective function. 

Frequency matters too. Occasional application creates one exposure pattern. Reapplication throughout the day creates another. Add lipstick, liner, gloss, plumper, sunscreen lip products or an overnight mask and the user experiences greater cumulative exposure to potential lip irritants and incidental ingestion.

And use doesn't occur for a single day. It can continue for years or decades.

Dose. Frequency. Number of products. Duration.

Absence of demonstrated harm is not the same thing as demonstrated absence of harm.

For something repeatedly applied directly around the mouth, there are two reasonable questions to ask of every ingredient:

Does it need to be there for healthy lip function, and have we considered the fact that some of it will inevitably be ingested?

Addiction is the wrong word

There is no convincing evidence that lip "balm" creates pharmacological addiction, nor that lips somehow become "lazy" and lose their ability to function because balm has been applied.

But human behaviour doesn't require a pharmacologically addictive substance to become habitual. Something feels uncomfortable. We perform an action. The discomfort disappears. Our brain learns the association.

Repeat it often enough and the action becomes familiar.

For some habitual users, being without lip balm can produce genuine anxiety. Products are kept beside the bed, in the handbag, in the car and at work.

Perhaps what we commonly call "lip balm addiction" is therefore describing several different things: genuine dryness, relief from irritation, learned behaviour, the reassurance of a familiar ritual and something else we know remarkably little about.

The sensation of continuously coated lips.

What does a normal lip feel like?

Apply a lip product and the surface of the lips changes immediately. Friction decreases, roughness is masked and the surface feels smoother. Depending upon the product, the lips may also become glossy, flavoured, cooling, tingling or temporarily plumped. Effects that can be created using ingredients capable of irritating or sensitising vulnerable lip tissue. In the case of some lip plumpers, irritation is not an unintended consequence. It is how the cosmetic effect is produced. 

Then the product wears away. The lips feel different.

But does different necessarily mean dry? Or does it simply mean not coated anymore?

There appears to be little direct scientific research answering this question. We do not have evidence demonstrating that habitual lip-product use recalibrates tactile perception so that biologically normal lips eventually feel abnormally dry.

But we do know that repeated exposure can change what we perceive as visually normal or attractive.

Researchers have specifically investigated lip fullness. Forty-eight women were exposed to faces in which lip fullness had been strongly increased or decreased. Afterwards, their judgments of attractive lip fullness shifted towards the type of lips they had just been viewing. The researchers found that even relatively short exposure could recalibrate judgments of attractiveness. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34511957

Beauty is not simply something we see. It is something we learn to see.

Then we went and put a camera in everyone's hand.

The smartphone, front-facing camera, social media, filters, influencers and selfies dramatically increased our exposure to our own faces and those of other people.

A 2024 systematic review covering 25 studies and 13,731 participants found associations between visually focused social media, digitally enhanced imagery and selfie behaviours, body dissatisfaction and consideration of cosmetic procedures. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39205749

Lips have become one of the most conspicuous targets: fuller, smoother, glossier, more symmetrical, more defined and increasingly altered. If repeated visual exposure can change what we perceive as an attractive lip, it leaves an intriguing unanswered possibility.

Could repeated sensory exposure to continuously coated lips also influence what we eventually perceive as a normal-feeling lip?

Science has not yet answered that question.

There may therefore be no single explanation for the person who says, "I can't live without lip balm." Genuine dryness, irritation, habitual application and altered sensory expectations may all play a part.

Which makes "lip balm addiction" a wonderfully inadequate description of a surprisingly complex phenomenon.

Ancient Principle. Modern Biological Understanding.

Balm itself was never the problem. We simply asked it to become too many other things.

Humans did not understand ceramides, epidermal differentiation, transepidermal water loss or essential fatty acids when they first applied oils, fats and waxes to vulnerable skin.

They understood through observation that covering and protecting vulnerable tissue created conditions in which it could restore itself.

Modern biology has allowed us to understand why.

Linoleic acid is an essential fatty acid that the body cannot synthesise and plays an important role in healthy epidermal barrier structure and function.

Occlusion performs another physical function. It reduces water loss while providing a protective layer over compromised tissue.

The balm does not heal the skin. Biology does.

We didn't return to the past because of nostalgia.

We returned because science helped explain why it was effective.

Why Vitis V didn't call it a balm

Vitis V didn't call Lip TonIQ a balm. Not because we rejected the original principle of balm.

Quite the opposite.

We returned to it.

But somewhere along the way, balm also became a cosmetic product category. Its original association with soothing and protecting vulnerable skin remained, while what a product called a balm was expected to do expanded dramatically.

The word remained. Its meaning changed.

Lip TonIQ returns to the original principle without returning to the modern product category.

That is why Vitis V Lip TonIQ contains four ingredients.

Cold pressed Vitis vinifera seed oil supplies lipids, including essential linoleic acid, to support healthy epidermal barrier function. Organic yellow beeswax provides the occlusive layer that reduces moisture loss and helps protect vulnerable lips while the underlying barrier restores itself.

Arrowroot gives the blend its spreadable, buildable texture. Natural mixed tocopherols help protect the product against oxidation.

All four ingredients also have established uses in food, a deliberate consideration for something applied directly to the lips, where incidental ingestion is inevitable.

Vitis V Lip TonIQ does contain beeswax. Beeswax and related bee-derived substances can cause contact allergy in susceptible individuals, so anyone with a known allergy or sensitivity to beeswax or bee-derived products should not use it. DermNet includes beeswax-related substances among reported allergens in lip-care products.

Nothing in Vitis V Lip TonIQ is to flavour, fragrance, tingle, cool, plump or artificially alter the appearance or sensation of the lips.

Nothing synthetic. Nothing unnecessary.

Progress didn't require reinventing balm.

 It required understanding why it worked in the first place.

Further References & Reading 

Nyman GSA, Tang M, Inerot A, Osmancevic A, Malmberg P, Hagvall L. Contact allergy to beeswax and propolis among patients with cheilitis or facial dermatitis. Contact Dermatitis. 2019;81(2):110–116. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31066083/

Photography - Kaja Reichardt on Unsplash