Re: ive had this problem for 7 years and counting
Hi there,
I have left my lips alone for about a month. They were in contact with water from drinking, eating, showering, and brushing my teeth though. I would notice that the skin would generally look allot better, as if it healed to more of a degree, after the thick skin would peel off naturally. But the same process just seemed to repeat it self every 6-7 days, skin would come off, look better, and then start getting thick until it peeled off again. No areas seemed to be getting any better with the next peels 6-7 days later. The time it took for my lips to peel also seemed to stay the same. The skin always looked the same after the 6-7 day peel. Ultimately, after seeing these results, I stopped the leaving my lips alone thing.
But... this did lead me to believe that the skin was too delicate after the 6-7 day peel to survive on its own and mature, and that dryness from air or lack of moisture was causing the newly formed skin to die, starting the peeling cycle all over again. And also, that since I had tried using a thick layer of Aquafor gel stopping the peeling process for three weeks, that air must be an important factor in the healing of mature skin. I have concluded that skin only peels when it has been damaged and that peeling is not a part of the healing process. So.. I came to the conclusion that the only way to heal my lips was be in a extremely humid environment, where the skin drying out would be impossible, stopping the dry air damage while leaving the skin open to the air, allowing it to breath and fully mature. Make sense?
Being in 100% humidity for the time allowed to heal the skin is almost next to impossible for me though. Creating this environment in a single room is unbearably uncomfortable and the only natural environments where this environment exists are places like rainforests and monsoon areas. Both are unrealistic ideas.
I also kind of doubt that this idea would fix the problem. I believe that if the lips were allowed to fully heal in a 100% humidity environment, that as soon as it was left, the peeling process would start all over again. This leads me to my next idea.
I have thought that a lack of sebum from the sebaceous glands(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebaceous_gland ) could be causing the problem as well. I believe that subconsciously we may have turned off production of sebum causing this peeling cycle to happen. It may be something we have forgotten we have done. Due to the self consciousness of how the lips looked the first time they were badly dried out and damaged(possibly from environmental factors, or even mouth breathing)we constricted and turned off the flow of sebum, possibly through tension and stress. I am now starting to believe that ex-cheilitis is a problem kept in continuum by the mind. A problem created and kept going by the mind. Like a bad habit, they become so ordinary we become unaware that we are even doing them. Maybe this condition is something we have trained into our subconscious, our automatic body(like blinking, walking). The mind may be controlling something unnaturally. A possible cure for this is Total Acceptance of the condition, eliminating the tension, stress, or unnatural processes involved.
If you asked me if I thought leaving the skin on longer than 6-7 days would be of benefit, I would say that from my experience it makes no difference. The dead skin wants to come off and keeping it on unnecessarily longer makes no difference in the amount the skin has healed. Being a ‘shut in’ also begins to way heavily on a person and I would recommend to everyone that the answer does not lie in the next new thing you can try. I can say that with all of the experiments I have tried, my lips are in the exactly the same state that they were in when ex-cheilitis first started.
Cheers