Can You Get Hooked On Lipbalm?

 One particular beauty myth that sticks in my mind was that if you relied too heavily upon lip balms and glosses, then would you become addicted?

 Perhaps not addicted in the sense that you would sell your house and children just to get your hands some Vaseline to see you through the day, but addicted to the point that when a rummage in your handbag doesn't provide you with a little tin of something to quench your thirsty pout, its enough to leave you panic stricken and wondering where on earth you'll get your next fix. (Although having seen the below LE Vaseline released to one lucky winner two years ago I'm thinking I probably would sell something of significant value to have it in my possesion...)

 It seems there was enough truth behind the musings for popular cosmetic science blog The Beauty Brains to name their first published book "Can You Get Hooked On LipBalm?". To cut a long story short... essentially yes. Yes you can become reliant on lip balm. Or at least your lips can anyway. It's kind of like when you start to wear false eyelashes on a daily basis, you soon realise how bloody awful you look without them and they becomes more and more difficult to live without.

 Thankfully The Beauty Brains have a much more scientific answer to these questions, as opposed to my manic ramblings about false eyelashes...

" Yes. Skin is a complicated organ, with multiple layers. The top layer, the stratum corneum, consists mainly of dead, dried-up cells, and as those cells flake off they send a signal to a deeper layer of skin - the basal layer - to produce fresh skin cells. This is the process of cellular turnover.

 When you apply lip balm regularly, you create a barrier that prevents the evaporation of moisture from the inner layers of skin, since the top layer isn't drying as much as it would normally, the basal layer stops getting the signal to produce new cells and slows down production.

 When you stop using lip balm, your lips dry out and your basal layer must start producing new cells again... but since your lips already feel dry, you apply more lip balm

 Once that application of lip balm has worn off and there are no new, plump, moist skin cells to replace the ones drying out, your lips feel dry again and you have to apply more lip balm. And so on, and so on. Use balm too often and you'll train your lips to rely on it."

 So in an attempt to try and reverse my reliance on all things shiny and moisturising I wondered if more of a Quality versus Quantity approach would work in my favour and have forgone my usual Vaseline in favour of Chanel's Hydrating Lip Treatment. At £20 for 3.5g it works out at a rather eye watering £5.71 per gram of product compared to Vaseline's more modest £0.08 per gram... The proof is in the pudding I suppose and I'll be doing a follow up post detailing my finds but already I'm struggling to not apply every five minutes (defeating the object of the experiment i suppose...) but the bullet is fast wearing down and I can already see this is a habit that isn't going to benefit my bank balance... My lips on the other hand seem to be fairing pretty well!