8 Tips for Amazingly Luscious Lips

Lips are some of your busiest body parts. They spend their time flapping and kissing and preventing the food you eat from falling right back out of your mouth. Busy lips need a lot of care to keep them soft and supple — especially if you don't treat them as gently as you should. Maybe you bite your lips when you're nervous, pick at them when they're chapped, or lick them to wet your whistle. Keeping your kissers looking and feeling good means keeping your grimy hands and teeth off of 'em and pampering them as much as you do the skin on your face. Here are eight things you can do to keep your kissers looking lovely day in and day out.

1. Eat healthy food. Whenever you ask yourself how you can improve the appearance of your skin, hair, nails, eyes, teeth, or any other body part, the first answer should always be to put healthy food in your body. After all, your body parts are made of tissues and cells that require good nutrition to function properly and appear healthy. So, ease off the fatty, salty, sugary, chemically-laden foods, and consume more fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and lean proteins.
2. Drink lots of water.  Along with healthy food as a surefire beauty treatment comes a healthy amount of water every day. Your body, after all, is 55 to 60 percent water, and proper hydration keeps your cells — including those of which your lips are made — healthy and plump.
3. Moisturize. Licking your lips doesn't count as moisturizing. In fact, quitting licking your lips and engaging in similar abuse is included a little further down on this list. No, moisturizing means directly hydrating the cells of your lips by applying a moisturizing lip balm throughout the day and before you go to bed at night. Find a lip balm with hydrating ingredients, which include Vitamin E, coconut and almond oil, beeswax, and shea butter.
4. Protect them from the sun. Any time you're outside while the sun is up, your lips are getting a dose of UV rays, which damage them as badly as they damage your skin. When you're choosing a lip moisturizer, pick one with SPF 30 or higher to prevent sun damage from making your lips look like little strips of leather precariously attached to your mouth.
5. Exfoliate those babies. Leaving all those dead skin cells on your lips will make them look dull, lifeless, and decidedly unkissable. Don't spend a lot of dough on a special lip exfoliator, though, because they can irritate, especially if you have sensitive lips. Instead, mix a little sugar and olive oil together to form a paste, and gently rub it into your lips. Rinse (don't lick!) and promptly apply your SPF moisturizer.
6. Stop with the biting and the picking. Licking your lips dries them out and can lead to darkening. Picking them is even worse, unless you're a fan of raw, bleeding lips. And since you're probably not, resist the urge to remove loose, chapped skin from your lips with your fingernails. Instead, read #4 and #5 above to take care of dry or chapped lips.
7. Ease off on the lipstick. Lipsticks contain all manner of chemicals and fragrances that can seriously dry out your lips — especially matte versions. You may have to pay a little extra for moisturizing lipstick, but it's worth the extra money. Look for those that contain shea butter, beeswax, Vitamin E, or jojoba oil, or consider using a tinted lip balm instead of a full-on lipstick for daily wear and save the lipstick for your goin'-out lips.
8. Soften lips with a teabag. Place a teabag in hot water and steep. Let the water cool. Remove the tea bag and place it on your lips for about three minutes and your lips will be amazingly soft.