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When it comes to lip balm, use can be a vicious circle. When you feel your lips getting dry, you lather on the balm, enjoy the silky soft feel, then 30 minutes later they’re crying out for more. So you apply. And apply, and apply and apply. Sound familiar?
While no-one likes that dry, chapped feeling, there’s a fine line between taking care of your skin and overdoing it. So can that ritualistic application verge on the territory of addiction?
While there’s even an online community and Reddit thread dedicated to “lip balm addiction”, experts regard it as more of a compulsion and it can be a very real obsessive compulsive disorder.
“The minute you define it, it becomes a ‘thing’, the compulsion becomes real,” OCD Action director Joel Rose told The Guardian.
So why do some people feel the need to apply up to 70 times a day?
First, let’s get back to basics. According to dermatologist and education manager at Dermalogica Emma Hobson, lip balms are designed to work like moisturisers.
“Because the lips don’t contain oil glands which is why lips are prone to drying out especially in cold conditions, a lip balm works by adding moisture, hydration and a surface ‘coating’ to protect the lips from moisture evaporation,” she says.
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And ironically, it’s true that some lip balms can actually be drying.
“Avoid lip balms that contain drying ingredients such as menthol or phenol, or possibly unbalanced amount of humectants, whereby the lip balms don’t contain sufficient proportions of moisture for the humectant to hold onto – instead they grab the extra moisture from the lips themselves,” she explains.