Is toothpaste making our lips chapped?
Winter is always an endless battle between the elements and our dry, chapped lips – and however much lip salve or Vaseline we layer on, it feels like a losing one.
But is the weather really the only thing to blame? According to a few Reddit users, the cause could be something (literally) under our very noses – toothpaste.
Redditor dannelinflannel wrote that while chapped lips had been the “bane of my existence since my childhood”, she’d finally found the “magic secret” to cure her ailment.
She said:
“So chapped lips have been the bane of my existence since my childhood. Im [sic] talking dry, cracked, peeling lips constantly. I was a chronic chapstick user and nothing I did seemed to make it better.
“I also have struggled with my skin care over the years which is what lead me to you guys [Reddit]. While I was reading through the sub to figure out how to change up my routine to work for me, I thought I would do a search for the magic secret to cure my chapped lips. Much to my surprise I found it.”
So after advice from the Skin Care Addiction Reddit community, she decided to swap two things:
“I never in a million years would have guessed my toothpaste was the one to blame. AND my chapstick wasn’t helping.
“So I picked up a travel size Sensodyne Pronamel (because let’s face it changing toothpastes is a big decision) and switched to using just a thin layer of Vaseline on my lips twice a day.
“Oh my god the difference it has made in just a week, and it’s the middle of a pretty cold winter here!”
After spotting the thread, Refinery29 asked dermatologist Joshua Zeichner, MD, if there was much substance in these findings – to which he said: “Allergic reactions and irritations to toothpaste are unfortunately common,” he says.
“If you have chronically chapped lips, mouth irritation or burning, or even a rash around the lips that will not go away, you must consider whether it’s your toothpaste that’s having that effect.”
How didn’t we know this before? We’re definitely going to have a serious re-think about our toothpaste choices from now on.
Have you ever made this connection before? Tweet us at @YahooStyleUK.
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