Every single thing we put into our body needs to be broken down by our body.
All the tricky bits like chemicals, synthetics and toxins are sent to the good old liver to be broken down, making him the most overworked organ. We are constantly exposed to chemicals and toxins, they are in the air we breath, in the food we eat, in the medicine we take, in the products we use to clean our homes, the stuff we put on our skin, not to mention the stress hormones. We bombarde our liver throughout the day with all this then go home and throw a couple of gins at the poor old fellow. And we wonder why we get sick……he never gets a moments peace, he constantly lives with a backlog of work, We would be off on stress leave if we had a quarter of what he has to deal with. This is why at Flower Power we are dedicated to reducing that chemical load in anyway we can, we are most definitely on team liver !!
Whats going on with my dry sore lips anyway?
The skin (epidermis) on your lips has a very thin outer layer (stratum corneum), no sweat glands (sudoriferous) and very few oil glands (sebaceous). It’s the combination of excretions from the oil and sweat glands that form the protective filmy barrier that waterproofs and lubricates the skin (acid mantle) but due to a lack of these glands in the lips they are always a bit compromised resulting in dryness (Trans Epidermal Water loss). In the lips there are also very few cells (melanocytes) that make the pigment (melanin) in skin, it this pigment helps protect the skin from UV damage, the lack of it makes the lips more susceptible to sun burn and cold sores.
What am I actually putting on my lips?
Some lip balms have ingredients that draw moisture to themselves (Humectants) they feel great when they first go on but they draw moisture from deeper in the skin and then the water evaporates (Trans epidermal water loss) resulting in even dryer lips. Look for a lip balm that has a semi -occlusive ingredient (an ingredient that forms a waterproof barrier) to stop the moisture evaporation.
At Flower Power we use Beeswax as our semi occlusive barrier to stop the evaporation of water (trans epidermal water loss) from the lips, some lip balm manufacturers use an full occlusive. While this sounds good in theory, a full occlusive…….petroleum being the biggest ugliest offender, can make the lips lazy and stop them from producing their own natural protective layer. Look for a lip balm that uses a semi occlusive such as bees wax, which provides a waterproof barrier while allowing the skin on your lips to keep on functioning.
Be wary of ingredients such as salicylic acid which is put into lip balm to help slough off the dead skin cells. Again while this sounds good, dead skin cells do not need to be sloughed off 10 x a day. This will just result in inflamed irritated lips. At Flower Power we believe the lips only need to be exfoliated once a week so we don’t put sloughing agents in our lip balms.
At Flower Power we use sustainably sourced Alkanet root to put the colour in our Gypsy Rose tinted lip balm. Synthetic colours are another thing you need to know about. A lot of colours are sourced from heavy metals or even worse crushed beetles, yes I said crushed beetles, poor little Cochineal bugs. Do you know they are farmed in Mexico purely to be squashed to make red dye for lipsticks. Make sure you know where the colour in your lip balm is sourced.
What about those preservatives, there is so much controversy about parabens. Are they good, are they bad, do they cause cancer? Clearly there is no concise answer to this but they are not found in my body so I’m not going to put them in my body if I don’t need to. We don’t use chemical preservatives in our lip balms at Flower Power, we use essential oils and vitamin E.
So what’s cool about Flower Power Lip balms ?
We are 100% clear about what goes into our lip balms and we totally understand the anatomy and physiology of the lips and use ingredients that actually do the job properly while reducing the chemical load on your poor old liver. We investigate the footprint of all our ingredients, we love our Mother Earth and do the best by her wherever we can when making our good honest lip balms.
Comments