“White skin and pink lips” - this is a beauty standard for the majority of Asian people. Therefore, to improve the color of your lips, you first need to clearly understand what the color on your lips comes from? Why do lips get dark? Let's find out with Dermalogica in this article!
What determines lip color?
In terms of lip structure, because the skin of the lips is very thin, the pink color of the lips is the color of the blood vessels under the skin. Although the lip skin is more special than other skin areas, it also contains melanin - melanin cells, although much less. The blood vessel system under the skin creates pink color for the lips, but we will see this pink color through the lip skin. Whether your lips are pink or dark is greatly influenced by skin pigmentation. Therefore, often people with naturally bright white skin have pinker lip color. On the contrary, people with darker skin tones will also have darker lip colors.
The skin of the lips is constantly renewed. Therefore, we can completely improve the color of our lips by removing dead cells and nurturing new skin for our lips.
So why do lips get dark? Let's find out with Dermalogica in the next part of the article!
Why are lips dark?
Lips are dark and dark, in addition to natural genetic factors, but also due to some incorrect habits in daily activities. Let's take a look to see if you're making any mistakes!
Mistake 1: Overusing tea, coffee and smoking
Using dark colored products such as tea or coffee can darken your lips. The more you abuse these drinks, not only your lips but also your teeth will become yellow.
Besides, dark lips often appear in smokers. Vertical wrinkles around the mouth, lips and gums that are darker than normal are lip characteristics in smokers.
Why do lips get dark? The cause of the above condition is Nicotine contained in cigarettes. Nicotine causes blood vessels to constrict, causing blood flow to decrease, blood to lack oxygen and darken in color. Using tobacco for a long time will cause purple, black or dark brown spots to appear on the lips. Not only that, smoking also makes the skin aging process happen faster, causing sagging and wrinkles on the skin's surface.
Mistake 2: Not exfoliating the lip area
Many of us are very careful when taking care of our facial skin, exfoliating regularly. But we do not take proper care of our lip skin. Leading us to forget, our lips also need to be exfoliated regularly.
Lip skin is very different from facial skin. Lip skin consists of two main structures: semimucosal and mucosal areas. These two areas are also divided into: dry lip area and wet lip area. The boundary of these two lip areas is the labial groove - the joint point of the upper and lower lips.
- Wet lip area: From the lip groove inwards
- Dry lip area: From the lip groove outward.
The dry lip area is the area we need to focus on taking care of. The lip skin structure is thin and has no oil glands, so the regeneration rate of lip skin is much faster than other skin areas. Therefore, exfoliating the lip area will help remove the layer of old cells that cause dull lips. At the same time, it helps the lip area increase its ability to absorb nourishing products.
Mistake 3: Using lip care products incorrectly
Have you ever wondered why even though you use lip care products, your lips are still dry? Maybe you're nourishing your lips the wrong way!
Improper lip balm is applying lip balm on unclean lips or when lips are dry. The main use of lip care products is to retain the amount of water we have just moistened on the lips. So, before applying lip balm, clean and moisturize the lip surface!
Mistake 4: Using too much lipstick
For women, using colored lipstick every day is definitely an indispensable thing. Using too much lipstick, especially matte lipstick, will darken your lips. Causes the lip skin surface to lack ventilation. At the same time, removing makeup from matte lipstick also makes lips much drier.
Advice for ladies in this case: Don't apply too much lipstick! In addition to when you need to apply lipstick, when you are at home or wearing a mask, you should replace colored lipsticks with lip balms. Besides, to protect your lip skin from the harmful effects of sunlight, you can choose lip balm products that contain sunscreen ingredients!
Above are 4 common mistakes that make our lips dark. Are you making any mistakes? If so, please adjust it!
Dermalogica has answered your question: Why do lips get dark? In the next article, we will continue to answer how to overcome the condition of easily chapped and dark lips.