Modern life has a way of getting you hooked to vices like never before. We rely on plenty of little ‘fixes’ in the course of the day to get us through the inevitable stress and madness of the fast-paced race to the top. Don’t think you’re one of these people? If you drink copious amounts of coffee or tea every day and can always be counted on to have a cigarette in your pocket, then you definitely are.
There’s plenty of data out there about why a lot of tea or cofee is bad for you. And even the most clueless of us know that cigarettes cause plenty of health problems in both the short and the long run. Obviously, the longer you’re hooked to caffeine and the death stick, the worse the damages. And it’s not just your health that suffers, it’s your appearance too. Everything from your skin and hair to nails and lips can show the effects of years of chain-smoking and crazy tea or coffee drinking. One of the most prominent signs of this long-term abuse is dark lips.
Drinking one or two cups of tea or coffee a day is not bad for health and that much is enough to provide the benefits of these beverages. But any more than that and you’re veering dangerously close to an addiction. Not to mention upping the caffeine in your system which dehydrates and reduces blood flow. Also, tea and coffee are wonderful for staining things, as anyone who has spilled some on their clothes will attest to. So your lips getting dark from over-drinking coffee and tea is hardly surprising.
Smoking makes your lips darker than tea and coffee do because it constricts blood vessels, which in turn deprives your skin of the oxygen and nutrients it needs to stay supple. Then there’s the tobacco, tar and nicotine in cigarettes which act as natural dyes. They stain not just your lips but also your teeth. Teeth can be whitened, but regaining the colour on your lips will require you to quit smoking altogether.
How to Get Your Lips Back to Their Natural Color
Your lips will regain their colour anyway once you have quit or at least significantly cut down on coffee, tea and smoking, but here’s what you can do to speed things along.
How to Get Your Lips Back to Their Natural Color
-
Apply a blend of lime juice, honey and glycerin every day if you can. Leave it on for as long as you can and wash off. This will help considerably to lighten the colour of your lips but only if you are consistent with it.
-
Other combinations of lip-lightening pack include lemon and turmeric, rose petals/rose water and milk, honey and almond oil.
-
Scrubbing your lips gently with a natural exfoliant helps too as it peels away the upper layers of skin and reveals younger, fresher skin underneath. You can use plain baking soda mixed with water to make a paste. Or you can mix sugar with lemon to get a bleach and scrub in one go. Remember not to scrub too hard and to space out your scrubs. You don’t want to do this every day because exfoliating everyday will actually make things worse. If you don’t have an exfoliant, just scrub with your toothbrush.
-
Keep your lips moist at all times with a generous application of ghee, oil or petroleum jelly. This is especially important after exfoliating your lips as the action of the exfoliant can leave your lips dry.
-
It’s also important that you protect your lips from the sun. Use a lip blam or lip gloss with SPF. Even then, keep your lips out of direct sunlight by donning head protection, using an umbrella or walking in the shade whenever possible. The ultraviolet rays of the sun can lead to further darkening of your lips because the skin there is so thin and delicate.
-
Stay hydrated. This means drinking more water as well as eating more fruits and vegetables.
Image – Shutterstock