Eli5 why does licking your lips make them more dry
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Your skin, including your lips, is not wet with water but with oils. Water and oil does not mix. The oil in your skin helps make your body watertight as the water can not penetrate the oily layer. Your spit however is water based. When you lick your lips you might think that you are adding moisture by coating it with spit, but what you are actually doing is scraping away some of the oil on the lips making it dryer. This is why in order to fix dry lips you need to use an oil based substance of some kind. You can use petroleum gel, lip balm, lipstick, or any other similar substance. Similarly taking a shower can dry out your skin, soaps and alcohol are even worse as they dissolve the fat. But a moisturizing cream can add back some of that fat in the skin.
Water molecules attract each other so licking your lips pulls water from your lips, when that evaporates then you are actually more dehydrated.
Your saliva contains enzymes that help to break down food, but unfortunately they also break down the protective barrier of your skin, and eventually the skin itself. It’s also why you can develop a rash if you over lick onto the skin surrounding your lips
Eli5: Why did I immediately lick my lips after reading the title despite knowing the consequences?
Because water is not a lubricant?
Why does licking my lips make them less dry but when I use chapsticks/lipstick they become drier than the Sahara desert?
Saliva is like water in that it mixes with the skin oils and evaporates away the oils, leaving the skin dry.
Water doesn’t hydrate (per se), oils and fats do. That’s why when you go swimming your skin gets wrinkly. Your skin forms a protective layer which keeps water and moisture in. Washing takes that layer away.
So if I oily skin, I can just relocate some of that oil that’s on my head onto my lips?
What about kissing? You don’t get super dry lips
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