Eat Your Way to Delicious Lips!
Do you sometimes feel that even with the richest lip gloss around town, your lips are still prone to dryness and chapping? Especially during this festive season when you’re either busy with preparations or rushing work to finish up in time for your long weekend leave, it is likely that you may not be drinking much-needed water to replenish your body’s moisture.
In Singapore’s tropical weather, it is quite rare for people to have chapped lips – that tends to happen in colder weathers - so if your lips are dry or even peeling, your lack of moisture is rather serious.
Like dry skin, lip dryness isn’t something that you can improve or cure overnight, but by incorporating certain foodstuffs in your daily diet, you’ll find soon find that those succulently luscious lips that you always wanted is not a dream!
According to the study of Traditional Chinese medicine, there are certain foods with ‘heaty’ effects, ‘cooling’ effects and neutral effects. The more obvious examples of food with heaty effects are durian, fried food and spicy food. These are the type of foods that cause you to fall sick from fever and sore throat, especially if you have a heaty constitution. Examples of ‘cooling’ food include mangosteen, green bean soup and herbal teas. These are the things you eat to combat the heaty effects. Heaty foods are generally drying, so food with neutral or ‘cooling’ effects is recommended for people lacking in moisture.
Vegetables: Spinach, mustard, radish, eggplant, bamboo shoot, tomato, winter melon, cucumber, luffa, bitter gourd, mushroom, green bean, soybean
Seafood products: Seaweed, jellyfish, clam, crab, black fish, oyster
Meat and protein sources: Pork, Duck meat, duck meat and eggs, goose meat and eggs, milk
Beans and grains: Sesame, Black bean, millet, wheat, barley
Fruits: Sugarcane, Banana, Water melon, mango, pear, Luo Han Guo, persimmon, coconut, pineapple, water chestnut
Others: Lotus root, lotus seat, lily, wolfberry, chrysanthemum, honey, tea leaves, rock sugar, table salt
Ensure that you’re drinking sufficient fluids daily (8 glasses) and avoid coffee and smoking. Good luck in your quest for juicy lips!
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In India, we have a belief that if you apply oil in the belly button, your lips would not get chapped and dry. It is especially true if you apply mustard oil but holds true with other oils also. And, it works!! So, one can give it a try. But, I can not fathom the reason why it works.
I always believe in the heaty/cooling effect of foods. When I lived in Singapore, I was obsessed with avoiding heaty foods because I have a heaty constitution. I think it's important to hydrate and moisturize from within too. I love flax seed oil for that.