How the Internet cured my lips

When I was young I would think it was because I’d been out in the sun too much, as I grew up in a coastal town in Australia my summers were spent at the beach or outdoors and my surfer cousins had the same dry, cracked lips so I would just shrug my shoulders and go on with my childhood never slapping any lip balm on them.

But as I got older and started to avoid the sun mainly because I’m pale and really don’t want to have leather skin by the time I’m 35. I noticed as my skin faded back to the whitest of whites my lips stayed the same. I went to doctors, I went to a specialist and even asked beauticians and they all would say ‘just get a good lip balm’.... Hmmm thanks never thought of that one.

I would even notice people staring at my lips while I’m talking to them, I don’t want to know what they were thinking but let’s be honest they were most likely thinking ‘just get a good lip balm’. Some days I would spend hours googling ‘best lip balms for dry lips’ or ‘Beauty editors most recommended lip care’, I tried lip scrubs, lip masks, lip creams you name it my lips have absorbed it. But it wasn’t until one day I joined a random Facebook beauty group where I found a thread on dry lips, and long behold almost every comment on the 100+ comment thread recommended ‘Dermal Therapy Lip Balm’ straight away I found it online and added it to my cart. It promised ‘results in 1 day’ and oh boy did it give me results!

When I first patted it onto my cracked lips It actually stung like when you put cream on a cut, so I was concerned but desperate enough to commit to it and long behold in literally one day my lips were the best I’ve seen them in my entire life. I immediately told everyone I knew, converted my sister and bought 2 more. But what I also found in this gift of a Facebook thread was a girl who explained that her lips were dry because of a lip condition called ‘Eczematous Cheilitis’ I was intrigued so I gave it a google and clicked on the first link to come up.

As I started reading through the symptoms a light bulb lit up in my head. Dryness or flakiness, split or scaly skin and even burning, tick, tick and tick! They also mentioned pain and a red rash but thankfully my pout didn’t get to the point of looking like I just had a 2 hour makeout session or as us Aussies call it, a ‘Pash Rash’. Reading through and realising google actually diagnosed me with something correct rather than just telling me I have cancer, I was shocked as I have never had any sort of skin condition in my life.

Sure I’d have some dry spots here and there thanks to shaving but nothing a bit of supermarket bought moisturiser wouldn’t fix. I also soon found out that this condition is not really known or diagnosed, I mean until I stumbled onto it thanks to social media I have never heard or even thought about eczema on lips even the specialists didn't mention it.

The triggers are said to be dry climates (cheers Australia), hormones (cheers female body), stress and even certain lip products. So after my find I went to my doctor as you should never trust google for medical diagnosis and he was able to officially diagnose me, he offered me a prescription cream but as my miracle lip balm was working it’s magic I decided to stick with that while doing a lip scrub once a week to clean off any dead skin cells.

I use the lip balm twice a day once in the morning and once before bed, I still get dry lips every now and then thanks to the wonderfully dry and hot climate I live in, but nothing to the extent I used to have to deal with. The best part of my newly vamped lip life is that I can wear lipstick and not feel insecure that my lips are peeling while I’m trying to rock some bold lips.