Coffee causes chapped lips?! Can that really be true?
I don't know about you, but the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is head straight for the kitchen and flip that switch on the coffee machine. Mmm, the smell of that freshly roasted coffee starts to permeate my brain and clear the morning fog.
That’s where I was sitting, listening to the steady stream of coffee fill my extra large mug while scrolling through my phone, when this headline popped up on my news feed: “Coffee causes chapped lips”.
Now I was wide awake, and that was before I had even taken a sip of my coffee.
"Coffee causes chapped lips?," I asked myself again. I have always suffered with my lips: summer or winter they are dry and sore and I am constantly applying lip balm. I think I have tried every possible make of balm on the market from simple Vaseline up to the more expensive designer brands, all to no avail.
Could coffee have been my issue all along? Did I have to stop my morning pick-me-up to beat dry lips? Thankfully the answer was no, and I breathed a sigh of relief. All was good in the world.
But this article did make for interesting reading. So what is the connection, and how do I solve it?
Well it turns out that coffee does cause chapped lips, due to the fact that coffee is a natural diuretic, and the more you drink the more dehydrated you get. That morning coffee that I rely on for a much-needed energy boost after eight hours of sleep and no water was the perfect storm for dehydration and its exterior symptoms, including chapped lips.
Thankfully there is a simple solution: while my coffee finished brewing I poured myself a glass of water and sipped it down. Now, I’ve made it a goal to drink a couple of glasses of water before I have my first taste of coffee in the morning.
Within two weeks, Hey Presto! No more chapped lips.
For best results combating the dehydrating effect of coffee, it’s important to start drinking water as soon as you wake up, to give it some time to work into your system. I also incorporate water throughout the day. Every time I fancy a coffee, whether it be on the train on the way to work or watching TV at home, I drink a bottle or glass of water beforehand.
This resulted in double benefits: Not only were my lips no longer chapped but I was also getting most of my eight glasses of water per day!
