Hello,

My lips started peeling about two years ago... One morning I awoke and my lips felt like they were on fire, so I immediately took a shower and scrubbed my lips profusely. Afterwards I went to go see a movie, and throughout the film I felt like my lips were oozing and wet. When I finally got out of the theater, my girlfriend noticed my lips looked like hell. In this offhand emergency, I went to my nearest Walgreens and asked the pharmacist to take a look. All he had to say (he looked disgusted at what he saw) was that my lips looked very chapped and I should try some chapstick or vaseline. Wrong!

A few days after that, my lips healed and I thought I was good to go. Shortly following however, my lips became increasingly dry and began to peel. And shortly after that, they began to crack and puss. Following that, they crusted over. After a few weeks of this, I realized I had a dandy little cycle going.

In the beginning, I started using all sorts of the usual: Vaseline, Aquaphor, and other moisturizers. Nothing was working to break the cycle, just moments of healed hope waiting to be shattered by embarrassment and discomfort. Then came the first doctor visit. He said I was stressed and should relax. Wrong! I admit being a working college student isn't a walk in the park, but I know a lot of people in the same position with perfectly fine lips who don't even use a lip balm or chapstick.

So comes the second doctor visit. The verdict? Use more Aquaphor. Wrong! The Aquaphor and Vaseline weren't hurting my lips, but they weren't helping either. All it seemed to do was coat my mouth and the peeling and puss continued underneath.

Losing hope, I took to the internet. Let me tell you, be careful what you read for. I found all sorts of crap. I tried lanolin on my lips, the sticky stuff new moms use to soothe their nipples from suckling. Wrong, and my girlfriend thought I was weird! Then I came across these "Skin Dr" pills. Wronger! Not only was a filling myself with false hope, I was losing cash on things I would normally dissuade others from buying.

Throughout this period, I became pretty depressed. I was a healthy person. I exercised 3-5 days a week. I ate right. I got a decent sleep. I had good hygiene. It just didn't add up. All I could think was 'why me?'

And then there was the third doctor visit. This one actually seemed to care, and was kind enough to call in a dermatologist to take a look. She prescribed me with a Desonide ointment 0.05%. I was told to use it for two weeks and then get off, since Desonide is a steroid and can cause permanent thinning of the skin over time. I gave a shot. Bingo! Or so I thought...

The Desonide did work to stop the cycle and left me with normal lips, but I had to use it twice a day, EVERY DAY. If I even missed one application, my lips would flare up. I began to become content, but I really didn't want to cause long term damage.

I used the Desonide ointment for a year straight.

I was more than happy to have normal lips, but something told me I wasn't really cured because I wasn't really cured. Looking for a long-term fix, I turned back to the internet. However this time, I was wiser (at least I hope). I read a lot of things about diet and came upon all kinds of things about candida and this and that and blah blah blah. I tried to flush my system drinking diluted apple cider vinegar, and began to eat tons of plain yoghurt. Wrong and not very wise of me! Though my digestion seemed to improve, my lips did not.

Then came the fourth and fifth doctor visits. The fourth doctor seemed very empathetic and even set me up to meet a dermatologist, doctor five. Doctor five told me that Aquaphor usually does the trick. Wrong! Then she promptly rushed me out to get to her next appointment. It was then that I began to believe doctors don't care anymore, but I digress. Sad, confused, angry, nonchalant. I went to home to reapply the Desonide. That same night, I came across this forum.

In all my years, I never dramatically altered anything in my daily routine, which was one of the biggest reasons why I couldn't understand why this was happening. I read all the stuff about sodium lauryl sulfate in soaps and toothpaste, but I'd been using Old Spice body wash and Crest for the better part of a decade. I still don't know why it happened, but I did find a way to stop it.

Recently I was at Walgreens (again) and I came across this toothpaste called Biotene. Apparently, it cures dry mouth which can cause cracked lips. It also does not contain SLS, but whether that's the cause of my ailment is still up for debate. The day after using it, I noticed my lips weren't inflamed when I woke up. In fact, my lips were pretty good throughout the day (no peeling, just very slight dryness) and I didn't even use the Desonide ointment. Thinking I found the answer, I bought the BPF Biotene Mouth Wash and Oral Gel. I promise I'm not endorsing their products, I just have a habit of being obsessive. Anyway, the next day my lips were even better and regained more elasticity. This is just a theory, but I now think the cause of my peeling lips was an excessive amount of bacteria in my saliva, which ended up ultimately damaging my lips. I also have both tonsils (dentist actually said I have 3+ tonsils, weird), so that might be a place for bacteria to flourish in larger-than-normal quantities. Then again, maybe I just had a little dry mouth and this stuff did the trick. I'm really not sure.

It's only been week, but I haven't had to use Desonide or anything else and my lips are perfectly fine. I'm not claiming this to be a cure, because I don't even know if it is. It might be, or it could be a combination of all the things I did before that got me here. The point of this post is to explain that there is hope and that this thing is beatable. Good luck.