While we focus on the wellbeing of our skin, it’s easy to forget that our lips experience the hardest workout. Not only do they frame every word we speak, embrace every mouthful we take and bestow every kiss we make, but they help us express every emotion we feel. They are one of the most visible of all human organs and are biologically significant as a tactile sensory organ and an erogenous zone. Adding the fact that lips do not share the same natural protection as facial or body skin, there are plenty of good reasons why we should pay our puckers special respect and care.

Lips are composed of skin, muscle and mucosa without bones and or infrastructure, making them uniquely movable and pliable. However, far from a simple structure, they comprise a complex weave of nerve fibres, linked to the primary motor neocortex in the brain — the area of the brain that manages higher functions of sensory perception, generating motor commands, spatial reasoning and conscious thought and language. The human brain devotes an unusually large part of its surface area to our very important lips.

The skin of the lip is particularly thin, with only three to five cellular layers, compared to facial skin which boasts up to 16 layers. Light in colour, the skin on the lips lacks melanin, the natural pigmentation in skin that helps screen out UV rays. While this allows blood vessels to appear through the skin of the lips and give them their delicious red colour, it means lips can’t tan, they can only burn. With darker skin colour, lips carry some melanin, which makes them darker in colour, offering some protection.

To boot, the lips don’t have sweat glands or sebaceous glands and therefore lack the usual protection of sweat and body oil that keeps the skin hydrated and smooth, inhibits pathogens, provides some UV protection and regulates warmth. For these reasons, the lips dry out faster, become chapped and cracked more easily and are more prone to infection.

Protect and maintain

Although their physiology makes them vulnerable to the elements and therefore damage, there are many natural and effective ways of protecting and maintaining our lips so they stay smooth, soft and healthy.

The lips, like the rest of the skin, hair and nails, are the last to receive nutrients that go to more important organs first, making proper hydration, diet and exercise integral to the wellbeing of the lips. Lip chapping and cracking can be a result of a nutritional deficiency, notably riboflavin and other forms of vitamin B deficiency (yet an allergy to cobalt from taking B12 supplement can cause chapping of the lips, while too much vitamin A cause lips to peel, although in the correct amounts it’s very important for skin health), as well as iron and essential fatty acids. Zinc, magnesium, vitamin C and vitamin B6 are all important for the body to be able to utilise essential fatty acids properly.

Poor gut health can contribute to poor nutrient assimilation, a compromised immune system and therefore dry skin. Probiotics are healthy bacteria that promote gut health and boost immune health. Probiotic supplements can be taken, as well as prebiotic- and probiotic-rich foods.

General lifestyle factors, too, affect the wellbeing of the skin on your lips. Exercise helps skin and lip health by stimulating metabolism and promoting the efficient delivery of nutrients to all areas of the body; it also helps oxygenation, detoxification and cell turnover. Stress is infamous for robbing the skin of moisture and causing dryness so, whenever possible, relax.