Lip Balm Recommendations

[Au Naturel]

If you are adequately and consistently hydrated, then you shouldn't need lip gunk. A major clue that children are dehydrated is to look at their lips. If their lips are dry, cracking, flaking, then the child urgently needs to drink water. Plain water, not soft drinks which act as diuretics. I've seen children with red, chapped rings around their lips caused by licking their lips to offset dryness. It's parental neglect.

That's false. Chapped lips are primarily caused by cold weather, dry weather, windy weather, and too much sun. Anything that sucks the moisture out faster than it can be replenished. Lip balm adds a protective layer of oil/wax to prevent this. People who are not used to the environment get chapped lips more often. Some are naturally more prone to it than others. General dehydration of the body is way down the list of possibilities. Contrary to the bottled water and sports drink industry, most people are not dehydrated.

Chapped lips Information | Mount Sinai - New York

Learn about Chapped lips or find a doctor at Mount Sinai Health System.

www.mountsinai.org

To say chapped lips are a sign of parental neglect is false and insulting. Licking your lips excessively can cause chapped lips by itself. Saliva contains substances that start the digestion process. Works great for food but it is not good to start digesting your lips.

Licking Lips: Due to Environment, Anxiety, and How to Stop

The key to stopping constant lip licking is to keep your lips protected and moisturized so you don’t feel the need to moisten them. If you tend to get dry, chapped lips, apply lip balm often, drink more water, and use a humidifier during the cold winter months.

www.healthline.com

Some soft drinks, the ones containing caffeine, are mild diuretics. All that means is that the water they contain stays in you system a shorter time. Unless caffeinated sodas were all you drank, the effect is trivial. There may be reasons sensitive people might want to avoid caffeine but dehydration isn't one of them.

Sodas that do not contain caffeine are not diuretics.

The myth about caffeine and dehydration

Caffeinated drinks usually won't dehydrate you, but water is still your best option.

www.mayoclinic.org

 

[Mary Terry]

Good grief. What a fuss. If a child has a raw, red ring around their lips from excessive lip licking, then a parent is neglectful of that child's needs. It is inexcusable to allow a child to suffer from the eczema and skin infection that occurs. Not to mention the bullying and "gross out" reaction from others when they see the red ring.

Where I live, dehydration IS the leading cause of excessively chapped lips and the skin around the lips. That may not be true in Minnesota or elsewhere, but it is certainly true in the southern US. Our weather is markedly different from other regions. We rarely have below-zero temps and howling winds to chap our lips.

Put some Vaseline or other soft, spreadable ointment on the affected area. A hard stick of wax, like chap stick, likely causes pain when applied to the affected skin and does nothing to rehydrate it.

Autistic children often lick their lips as a stim. They also put things in their mouths like sticks, twigs, leaves, and other stuff they pick up from the ground or floor. My nephew did that for many years, finally moving on to plastic swizzle sticks and straws and chewing his nails for oral stimming. I understand that stimming behaviors are hard to alter but would think that soft, chew toys are a better way to satisfy the need for oral stimulation.

 

[Nitro]

 

[Gerontius]

Carmex does the trick for me, but that's not organic. However its active ingredient, lanolin, is natural, and derived from wool. It's why you never see a chapped sheep (though you may see sheepskin chaps, but that's different.)