Chapstick is one solution–but not only for the reason that you think! Read on to cure your child’s lip suffering once and for all.
If you or your child are habitual open mouth breathers, chances are your lips are constantly dry, chapped, or cracked. Mouth breathing is the primary reason why lips get chapped!
This only gets exacerbated in the winter cold, especially with stuffy noses and drying central heat. Add lip licking to the mix and you’ve got yourself a burny mess.
As a speech therapist who works with kids to close their mouths and learn nose breathing, I often give “use chapstick every hour” as homework. This is partly because I really want their lips to heal, but there’s another reason. Chapstick acts like a “glue” of sorts. When we feel it on our lips, we tend to close them and encourage nasal breathing.
Your nose acts like an air purifier. There are tiny “hair filters” in the nose that clean and warm the air we breathe. When you breathe through your mouth, the air goes right through your mouth into your body without filtering all those work/school and work germs out. Hence, many of us or our kids who habitually mouth breath are constantly congested and getting sick.
It’s a vicious cycle. There’s congestion, more mouth breathing and germs, more congestion and chapped lips too. But if you keep that chapstick on your lips, you’re on your way to healing as your lips stay closed and breathing resumes through your nose–and your lips stay hydrated and comfortable.
Again, applying once or twice isn’t going to heal or help much. You want to keep applying hourly or often enough to keep lips moist and balmy.
Here’s more dry skin solutions:
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