How To Look After Your Lips

The lips are often seen as a sign of youthfulness and sex appeal. A great example of this can be found with Angelina Jolie.

Angelina Jolie’s large fulsome lips signal health, vitality and of course, sex appeal. As a result her lips are partly responsible for her now being regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world.

Although not everyone has the lips of Angelina Jolie, it is possible to improve the lusciousness of your lips even before you begin to apply makeup providing you have a good skin care routine.

This is something certainly worth taking the time to educate yourself about, because as we age the lips naturally become thinner, loose their fullness and start to fade in colour.

So let’s now look at some tips as to how you can improve the appearance of your lips to make them look fuller and more succulent regardless of your age.

Exfoliate Your Lips

One of the best ways to exfoliate your lips is to apply a chemical exfoliant to the area of skin that surrounds your lips.

This is the area where fine lines and wrinkles start to develop as you age, and something which will occur much more quickly if you smoke.

For women who apply lipstick and have a wrinkled mouth, they may even notice lipstick bleeding into these lines causing them to look ungroomed and sloppy.

By exfoliating the area of skin that surrounds your mouth, you can help to reduce the appearance of these wrinkles whilst also rebuilding the underlying collagen that supports the skin.

To exfoliate your lips you can use a regular facial scrub to gently remove dead skin cells on the surface. This will also stimulate blood flow, thereby giving your lips a more youthful and vibrant appearance.

Moisturise Your Lips

One of the most obvious signs of dehydration is dry and cracked lips, because the lips require a lot of moisture to remain plump and retain their thickness.

So if you don’t drink much water throughout the day, or do not moisturise your lips, they are likely to dry out very quickly.

Licking your lips is one way to temporarily moisten them. However this should be avoided because in the long run it will only dry them out and leave your lips chapped.

To moisten your lips start the day by applying your regular face cream, and then throughout the day periodically apply lip gloss, lip balm or a lip cream.

These often contain natural humectants which serve to lock moisture into the skin, thereby helping them to remain plump and crack free throughout the day.

If you spend a lot of time outside, you may need a heavier type of lip cream that is thicker and more waxy to prevent your lips from drying out.

Ideally this should include sunscreen to prevent the formation of wrinkles associated with photosensitive skin aging.

Thinking Your Way To Luscious Lips

Apart from the skin care guidelines given above, the type of thoughts you have and your attitude towards life plays an extremely important role in determining how your lips look.

If you spend most of the day thinking negative thoughts or worrying, you are likely to have slightly downturned lip corners which then makes you look unhappy, and tense thinner lips which can accelerate the formation of wrinkles around the mouth.

Having a positive mindset or mood however has the opposite effect. When you are happy the lips naturally relax. This helps to give them a fuller appearance and reduce the rate at which mouth wrinkles occur.

So try to keep yourself positive and stress free throughout the day, and avoid tensing your lips unnecessarily.