Mission to find an effective lip balm (Part 1): How do lip balms work?

My lips get very dry and flaky in wintry weather and aeroplanes. I religiously apply lip balm when they get like this, but often I feel like it makes little difference and they continue to be chapped and peeling. I’ve sometimes felt like applying a balm actually makes them worse. I’ve been doing some research to try and find out whether that could be true and to find a lip balm that is effective.

It seems that lip balms can work in two main ways: to prevent existing moisture from escaping and to actually add more moisture. It looks like there might be other ways they can help, like masking the appearance of flaking skin cells and helping skin cells be shed more quickly, but I’ll focus on these another time.

The majority ingredient in most lip balms will be an ingredient like petrolatum/mineral oil (that’s vaseline), lanolin or beeswax ( an unreliable source on wikipedia says that the first lip balms might have been ear wax!). These are ‘occlusive’ ingredients which act like a barrier to prevent moisture evaporating from the lips.

Lip balms might also do some moisturising themselves, by including ingredients that help the outer skin in the lips draw in more moisture from the body. Examples of ingredients that do this include amino acids, lactic acids, alpha hydroxy acids, propylene glycol, glycerine and urea. One of the articles I read, suggested that humectants on their own might increase drying, as they bring moisture to the outer layer of the lips more quickly where it would be evaporated, unless combined with a occlusive ingredient.

I’ve checked out the ingredient lists of some of the lip balms I’ve tried in the past to see how they compare, and whether they contain both humectants and occlusives. (I’ve written the ingredients lists in full so if you think I’ve missed an ingredient that is a humectants or occlusive please do let me know.)

	Carmex	Vaseline	Chapstick (original)	Chapstick (moisturising)
Occlusives	Petrolatum, lanolin	Petrolatum	White petrolatum, lanolin	White petrolatum, lanolin
Humectants	None	None	None	None
Ingredients	Petrolatum, Lanolin, cetyl esters, theobroma cocao seed butter, cera alba, paraffin, camphor, menthol, salicylic acid, aroma, vanilla	Petrolatum	White petrolatum, Padimate (sunscreen), arachidyl propionate, camphor, carnauba wax, cetyl alcohol, D&C red no. 6 barium lake, FD&C yellow no. 5 aluminum lake, fragrance, isopropyl lanolate, isopropyl myristate, lanolin, light mineral oil, methylparaben, octyldodecanol, oleyl alcohol, paraffin, phenyl trimethicone, propylparaben, titanium dioxide, white wax	White petrolatum, octinoxate, oxybenzone (both sunscreens), aloe barbadensis leaf extract, carnauba wax, cetyl alcohol, fragrance, isocetyl stearate, isopropyl lanolate, isopropyl myristate, lanolin, methylparaben, mineral oil, paraffin, propylparaben, tocopheryl linoleate/oleate, vitamin E, white wax

Conclusion – The popular lip balms I’ve tried contain no humectants! I am going to search for a lip balm that contains both the occlusives that these lip balms contain, but also some humectants to simultaneously restore the moisture, in the hope that these balms will be more effective. I'll write an article soon on how my hunt goes.

Whilst researching lip balms, I’ve also found articles suggesting that menthol, camphor and salicylic acid are controversial ingredients. Each of these ingredients is contained in at least one of the lip balms above. I’ll write an article soon trying to get to the bottom of whether these ingredients are friend or foe.