Raise your hand if your lips are being personally victimized by this bleak, cold weather. Well, if you’ve got your hand raised, then lip slugging might just be for you. And get in line, because there are clearly a lot of us going through it: dry lips can leave our skin irritated, infuriating, and a little insecure. According to TikTok, however you really don’t have to live with sand paper for lips, or grout for a pout.
Enter yet another lip hack, but don’t roll your eyes just yet: lip slugging has over 600m views on TikTok and, most importantly, is dermatologist approved. You might remember when skin slugging first took over the Skin-tok. If so, it’s similar to that: “Slugging is the process of using a petroleum-based product on your skin to prevent dryness, protect your moisture barrier and boost the glow,” says @skincarebyhyram.
Petroleum jelly has a bit of a bad rep but it works hard to seal moisture on skin that was once dry and dehydrated and it’s also non-comedogenic i.e. it doesn’t clog pores, so it’s a win-win. Boarded Derm and trained Mohs Surgeon Dr. L. J Maxfield also says: “Petroleum prevents 99% of epidermal water loss. This is a really perfect balance because that 1% that it leaves behind is acually great for wound healing.” Lip slugging is simply the art of slugging, but only on the lips.
What is lip slugging?
This lip conditioning treatment works perfectly to soothe cracked, dry or tight lips, by layering a mix of thin and thick products and letting it work hard overnight, to allow time for the moisture to get locked in and for the skin barrier to be repaired.
Dr. Shah, otherwise known as @dermdoctor, adds: “The reason why we told people to slug in the first place is restore and irritated skin barrier that has been either been damed by the wind or the sun or has dry skin conditions. So I prefer to just take a very hydrating moisturizer and then slug over the top of that.”
- Apply a thin, gentle and hydrating moisturizing cream
- Layer in a thick cream, or balmy product to seal moisture and hydration like
- Leave it on overnight
What do I need?
Try these for light moisturizing:
Try these balmy creams:
Are there any risks to lip slugging?
Although skin that is flaky, dry, or even stripped from hydration that will in incidentally compromised moisture barrier would really benefit from slugging, consider your skin type, and the area around your lips. If you have oily skin, lip slugging can be okay, as long as you don’t congest the area around it. But sure to avoid comedogenic lip products that leak around the lips and may cause clogging around the lip line.
It’s important to not that dry lips are not just a symptom of cold weather. In fact, lips can get dry from too much sun too, so extreme weather conditions can affect moisture barrier of your lips. Then there is are also lack of vitamins, (Vitamin B2 is essential for cell function and in turn, healthy lips, zinc and iron deficiency have also been linked to dry lips). Also consider the over licking of the lips — where repeated saliva will end up washing the natural grease from the lips which can lead to dryness — and of course fragranced lip balms. These are are all contributing factors for dry lips, and if you don’t resolve the root of the problem, then there is only so much lip slugging can do.
Another thing you should take not of is what you are using for the slugging. Boarded Derm and trained Mohs Surgeon Dr. L. J Maxfield also says: “Petroleum prevents 99% of epidermal water loss, but then it can also increase the strength of what you’re using underneath it up to 1000 fold and that’s where the cautionary tales and caution flags go off.” so Dr. Shah adds that as great as slugging is it’s important to make sure that the ‘slug’ is good. “The flipside is you take an irritating ingredient and you occlude it, you could end up with bad irritation.” Which is why what products you use for slugging is extremely important.
Good news though, this means that for a while, there will be no more powdered donut looking and feeling lips. Let’s get that glaze back.
This story originally appeared on Glamour UK.
