I hate having chapped lips – I DESPISE IT! As someone who has been carrying lip balms, butter, smackers and even straight-up ghee in tiny tins for my lips, you can say that I am a bit obsessed with a smooth pout. Years of using a ton of lip products have led me to an unusual detour because the cure for my chapped lips lies anywhere but in the lip category. Yep, the one thing that has done wonders for my pout is eye cream – and here’s why it makes sense!
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Let’s start with a bit of context: Lip balms, the hero product that rules the market in the lip care category, offer little to no benefits for my dry lips. The key ingredient of lip balms is either beeswax or petrolatum which are occlusive in nature and sit on the lips to prevent moisture water loss. However, they do not penetrate into the deep layers of the skin, thus offering little to no nourishment to the chapped lips.
Switching to heavier lip products did not work well either. Somehow, my combination skin was comically paired with dry lips which means that I cannot resort to heavier products like lip butter or lip oil to address dryness. They’d just give me breakouts around the lip area. Plus, heavy formulations aren’t exactly wearable, especially under the mask or for the ones who tend to lick their lips before they talk. So, what does a girl who hates chapped lips (and loves impromptu makeup sessions) do? Enter: eye cream!
It is safe to say that what really led me down the path of massaging pricey eye creams on my lips was desperation. Hilary Duff takes her eye cream down to her laugh lines and that revelation honestly had me shooketh!
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But applying your eye cream on other parts of the face to address dryness or fine lines makes perfect sense. Especially for the lips which, like the eye area, are also burdened with a thin and damage-prone layer of skin that needs extra attention. Eye creams are potent, hydrating and nourishing agents often formulated with ingredients like ceramides, peptides, hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, vitamin C and E. The only difference is that the concentrations of these ingredients are really high in a tiny dollop of eye cream as compared to regular moisturisers and lotions. This works in favour of lip health as you can deposit extremely potent ingredients onto the lips without having to use a lot of products. They get absorbed into the thin and sensitive skin of the lips and work from deep within without any re-application of the product.
For me, the biggest benefit of using eye cream on my lips has to be the anti-wrinkle benefit it offers. Yes, your lips can get wrinkly too! With age, the skin on the lips starts getting thinner due to collagen degradation and so, a tad bit of anti-ageing action might just be what they need. Formulated with retinol derivations or adenosine, eye creams can do wonders to smoothen out uneven texture. Many also consist of AHAs. BHAs or PHAs in milder concentrations that offer gentle exfoliation to your lips. Plus, by nature eye creams are formulated to be lightweight, so you do not have to worry about a heavy product on the lips. With so many eye cream benefits for lips, I wonder how everybody is not doing it yet!
