Dry lips deserve gentle care and attention with safe ingredients that won’t disrupt hormones. These remedies for dry lips consider nutrition, skincare, and lifestyle for a holistic approach to healthy, plump, and hydrated skin.
Chapped lips in the winter months are super common.
You practically expect them, right?
But the modern remedies we’re given to heal dry lips aren’t that effective, and often expose us to hormone disruptors and carcinogens. Let’s take a page from our ancestors’ book and unpack the root cause of dry lips and use nutrition, skincare, and lifestyle changes to rehydrate disrupted skin.
Why Do We Get Chapped Lips?
Once the humidity of summer disappears, our skin starts to lose its natural softness. But that’s only half the story. The other half? Minerals. Chapped lips and flaky skin can be a sign that it’s time to increase your mineral intake. Collagen, which naturally plumps and softens the skin, needs plenty of minerals, vitamins, and fatty acids to build. So when we’re trying to heal chronic dry lips, we need to look at all of these factors.
Try These Natural Remedies for Dry Lips
Advice like “apply lip balm twice a day” is too obvious. You’re already doing that. Try using tallow balm instead of mineral oils, pairing your lip balm with a lip scrub, and harnessing the power of herbal remedies.
Always apply lip balm overnight
Keep a lip balm on your nightstand and apply a thick layer right before you go to bed. Actually, this is a good habit to keep with any nourishing skincare. Beauty sleep isn’t just a myth. Your cells work to regenerate as you sleep, so you might see better results if you give them tools (aka minerals) to work with.
Swap mineral oils for tallow balm
When you shop for hydrating lip products, you’ll come across petroleum and paraffin wax. But be careful: mineral oils are the byproduct of crude oil, and they’re not biodegradable. They’re also just not that effective, and they carry risks for hormone disruption and carcinogen contamination.
Mineral oils sit on the skin and seal it from outside elements, which gives the illusion of moisture. But it only works if you apply it constantly. Unlike mineral oils, grass-fed tallow is regenerative skincare. It uses fatty acids to moisturize and natural vitamins and minerals to rebuild, which means long-term healing, not just prevention.
Try a lip scrub
If your lips are dry and cracked, picking at them will make them worse. But what does help is intentionally removing the dry skin so you can revive the cells underneath. That’s where a lip scrub comes in. Use a scrub with a sugar base to gently brush away dead skin cells, then follow up with a tallow lip balm.
Use herbal ingredients to restore dry lips
Calming herbs like chamomile, marjoram, frankincense, ylang-ylang, and spruce are soothing to disrupted skin. We add them to our tallow lip balm because they relieve dry and irritated skin almost immediately, while it can take a few days to fully plump and restore the skin.
Drink more bone broth
The real goal is to consistently get collagen into your system, which you can do by drinking bone broth, eating homemade gelatin gummies, or even taking a high-quality collagen supplement. Collagen helps target the need for minerals to rebuild the skin. It contains fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals that all support healthy skin and deep hydration for the cells.
Use cell salts
If you know chronic dehydration is behind your dry lips, try cell salts. These are the homeopathic version of minerals and, according to the laws of homeopathy, should deliver nutrients exactly where your body needs them most. The most popular cell salts for dry skin are silica (for collagen production), calc fluor (to strengthen elasticity), and nat mur (if you’re chronically dehydrated).
Try a humidifier or face steamer
Adding moisture to your environment can help with chapped lips and winter dry skin, especially if you follow up that moisture with castor oil, tallow balm, or shea butter. Make face steaming a part of your nighttime routine before you apply your skincare for best results. That said, you should always be careful of mold with any kind of humidifier. Clean your device regularly, check for mold, and buy from a mold-conscious brand.
Prep your lips for harsh environments
Sunny climates, open windows, high altitude, and airplane travel can all dry out your lips. It’s best to prepare your skin if you know you’ll be in this kind of environment. Use a lip mask the night before, and then cover your lips with a waxy coating like beeswax to lock moisture in.
Dry and Chapped Lips Are Common — But There Are More Advanced Ways to Treat Them
By “more advanced,” we mean natural.
Think about it…
Mineral oils, fragrance, and camphor don’t belong on our skin. And the advice to reapply lip balm five times a day is evidence that these ingredients simply don’t work.
Luckily, nature provides us something that does work. Beeswax, herbs, and grass-fed tallow have been used for centuries to restore dry lips and dry skin during the winter months. They don’t just seal the skin and pores (like mineral oils do) but rather nourish it back to wellness with antioxidants, fatty acids, and minerals — all the tools your cells need to rebuild.
If you’re tired of chemical exposure and reapplying lip balms that only sort of work, it’s time to try something new:
Grass-Fed Tallow, Herbs, and Beeswax