Why are my lips always chapped? (and how to fix it)

If you're asking "why are my lips always chapped?", you've probably tried everything. The super moisturizing balms and sticks, the repair ones, the super expensive ones, the cult following ones. You try them, you have a brief moment of hope (they feel better!!) and then...20 minutes later, it's as if you never applied anything and your dreams are shattered. So you apply more, because really, what else is there to do?

And a chapstick addiction is born. Welcome.

Why are my lips always chapped?

Let's take a quick detour into skin science, shall we? I promise it will be understandable for a regular person.

Lip skin is not the same as regular skin. It's thinner and doesn't have oil glands in the same way, so it can't moisturize itself. The good news is, if your skin barrier is working how it's supposed to, that's not a problem. It keeps the moisture the lips need in, keeps the irritants out.

The flip side is, when the skin barrier isn't doing what it's supposed to (maybe from cold weather, dry air, irritating ingredients, the list goes on), we begin to enter the death spiral. Moisture starts escaping faster than anything you can do to replace it.

Chronically dry, chapped lips are very often a skin barrier problem, not a hydration problem (though by all means, please hydrate!). So if you're constantly wondering "why are my lips so chapped?!" despite seemingly doing all the right things, this is why.

Why your lips never seem to get better: enter the hamster wheel

Most lip balm and stick products use a combination of petroleum jelly, mineral oil, and wax. These do a great job of coating the lip and sealing in moisture that is already there, but this presents us with two problems: one, if the lips are already dry, we're sealing in...not much. Two, because they're not actually doing anything to help support the barrier repair, it gets worse. A compromised barrier loses more water and lets in more irritants, gets more compromised...you see the problem.

This is why the hamster wheel, death spiral, insert your analogy of choice, happens. You put on the balm, it feels good for a bit because you've sealed in the lips, it wears off pretty quickly because life happens, it feels worse.

In short, lip balm can make lips worse, not because of some mystery ingredient, but because it masks the problem without fixing it.

What actually fixes chronically chapped lips

Kokum butter.

Kokum butter is a unique plant butter that comes from trees in India, and it's actually perfectly set up to help out with the lip situation. It's about half made up of something called stearic acid, which is just a fatty acid that happens to be one of the main things that the skin barrier is made of. So rather than just sitting on top and sealing, it's able to contribute to the skin's barrier repair.

Kokum butter also has a sealing quality, so it does protect the lips from losing moisture, but the key is that it is simultaneously doing that support work. And unlike shea or cocoa butter, kokum is non-comedogenic (fancy skin words that mean it doesn't clog pores) and absorbs with zero greasy feel. It's more of a soft feel with kokum, actually. Wins all around.

What we made

Calm Balm is made of kokum butter, plus other plant butters and oils that help support skin and lip repair. It doesn't have any fragrance or color, which can also irritate skin.

Our superfans tell us that on day one with Calm Balm, they were able to go from applying their prior lip balm or chapstick to a once a day application of Calm Balm. And, the best part, their lips actually got better, not worse, over time.

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