Hate those crow’s feet around the eyes? Are your laugh lines getting deeper? These are just some of the signs of aging? But as Jenna Rosenstein writes in “Why You Should Be Anti-Aging Your Lips,” for Harper’s Bazaar, the lips are one of the first places to show signs of aging, but often they are neglected.
Rosenstein quotes New York dermatologist, Dr. Macrene Alexiades-Armenakas, who points out that many changes occur in lips due to aging, among them loss of volume and definition. If you smoke, you are more apt to get lip lines and wrinkles from the muscular movement; pursing can have a similar effect. Too much exposure to the sun and having pale skin are other factors that contribute to lip lines and wrinkles.
Shape Magazine offers suggestions for good lip skincare in “7 Tips for Beautiful Lips.” Here are three things in particular, you’ll want to do take good care of your lips.
Use sunscreen: Your lips are susceptible to the sun since they lack melanin (the pigment that gives hair, skin and eyes their color). You’ll want to use a sun protective product on your lips or a lipstick with SPF 15.
Don’t lick your lips: Licking your lips damages the protective barrier that protects your lips. To keep them moist, use lips balms. You can choose products from hydrating ingredients such as beeswax, shea butter, vitamin E and almond, jojoba or coconut oil.
Exfoliate: There are exfoliators for lips that slough off dry skin. However, if your lips are severely chapped or cracked, use the products no more than once a week, since the acids in them can irritate skin.
Mind your health
Your lips also benefit from the other things you want to do for general overall good health.
- Eat right: Good diet isn’t just important for your skin; it also benefits your lips. What you eat – the vitamins and minerals – also impact the condition of your lips. Dry lips or those painful cracks at the corners of your lips could indicate a lack of iron, zinc, vitamin B3, or vitamin B6, says Kasandra Brabaw in “5 Things Your Lips Say About your Health” in Prevention.
- Drink plenty of water: Your lips are not different for any other part of your body, which requires water. Drinking water keeps your body, skin and lips hydrated.
- Avoid stress: When you’re stressed out, you may get painful cold sores on your lips. Exercise is a great way to keep your stress level down.
Retinol to help reduce lines
To help diminish lines around the lips, you may want to consider looking for treatments with skin-strengthening retinol to tighten the area. Retinols achieve their anti-aging results by protecting skin from free radicals and prompting surface skin cells to turn over and die rapidly so that new skin cells can grow. Retinols also slow down the breakdown of collagen.
A retinol lip treatment can be part of your overall retinol skin-care regime. True Results Retinol Active Skincare System brings the anti-aging benefits of Retinol in a Retinol Active System with six new easy-to- use products for day and night formulated to decrease fine lines, wrinkles and discoloration associated with natural skin aging.