Protect Your Pout from the Sun's Harmful Rays
These days I'm seeing more and more lip balms, glosses and lipsticks packing SPF. Finally! Anyone who knows me well knows I'm obsessive about protecting my skin. Since middle school I've been on a mission to get all my girlfriends to wear SPF on their faces, necks and hands every day (they resist at first, but will thank me 20 years from now). For the longest time, lips have been neglected. It's too unpleasant, even for me, to rub sunblock on my lips, and it's also fairly easy to forget to protect them because it isn't often that you feel an actual sunburn on your pout.
Forgot your block? Try these tips for cooling down a sunburn.
But fail to protect them, and the damage will cause your lips to crack and peel constantly as you get older, or worse they could develop skin cancer. Reports show that lips are actually more susceptible than skin to aging from sun damage, and still more prone to developing serious cancers. Studies have also shown that wearing shiny balms and glosses without any SPF can actually attract the sun's rays to the lips, making the problem even worse. So now you can see why I'm so pumped that protective balms and lipsticks are cropping up! My favorite is Mario Badescu Lip Wax SPF 15, which feels really light, and is a great moisturizer. I've been gifting tubes to my girlfriends, and because the balm feels so great on, this might be my most successful SPF campaign yet!
Here comes the sun! Stay in the loop with these sunscreen questions answered by a top dermatologist.
-- Laurel Pantin
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