Ok so when it comes to lip balms, glosses, plumpers and the like, I have my theories.  It’s pretty simple, anything I put on my lips, no matter how natural or pure, ultimately makes my lips drier.  There may be some momentary soothing relief, sometimes even a delightful healing sensation, but in the end my lips end up feeling parched and thirsty for more. And so the cycle begins.  My husband says that once you put something on top of your lips they no longer produce their own moisture, and your lips get hooked to the stuff. Now, he’s not some sort of lip expert, but I’ve never seen him use any chap stick or lip balm, and he always has a beautiful juicy never-chapped set of lips. So maybe there’s something to the theory.

Enter Skin Nutrition’s Lip Plumper, and we bust that theory wide open. I received a full-sized sample of the Lip Plumper in the mail several weeks ago, and have been using it ever since. This stuff is amazing! For starters, it’s not a balm or a gloss, but more like a light lotion.  You are supposed to use it at night before bed, although it may be used as often as you like. It’s not something that you put on and then soon after feel this giant need to reapply.  Once you apply it, within a few moments it gets absorbed into your lips, without leaving any sort of balmy, glossy, moisturized overcoat.  As far as the lip plumping goes, it won’t create instantly plump lips like most lip plumpers. However, after a week or so, I definitely noticed my lips were fuller and much healthier. They weren’t full in a “Wow, whose lips are those!” sort of way, but more in a supple, healthy, your-lips-when-you-were-little sort of way.  In addition, my chapped lips are healed! My lips that have basically been chapped all winter are seriously no longer chapped. And I only use the stuff in the morning and at night. The other thing that’s very cool about this product is that since using it my lips look darker - again in that way your lips looked when you were younger; flushed and full.

I do admit that $50 is pretty steep for a lip product. But if you think of it more as a truly amazing anti-aging eye cream, for your lips, it makes a bit more sense.

Now having said all that, I must add that while most of the ingredients are really great, there are definitely a few things I’d rather not put on my lips - like dimethyl MEA, propylene glycol and the last two ingredients which are parabens. Even worse is triethanolamine, which got a harzard rating of 6 on the cosmetic safety database (10 is the highest).  These are the types of ingredients that may actually prevent me from buying this product again. I hope the folks are Skin Nutrition consider this, because if they reformulate they just may have the most perfect lip product ever.

Ingredients

Aqua (Water), Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter), Hydrogenated Olive Oil, Squalane, Persea Gratissima (Avocado) Oil, Glycine Soja (Soybean) Oil, Cetearyl Olivate, Glycerin, Tocopheryl Acetate, Sorbitan Olivate, Olea Europaea (Olive) Fruit Oil, C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Ethylhexyl Palmitate, Ribes Nigrum (Black Currant) Seed Oil, Rosa Canina Fruit Oil, Thioctic Acid, Palmitoyl Oligopeptide, Ascorbyl Palmitate, Dimethyl MEA, Ceramide 2, Tribehenin, Aloe Ferox Leaf Extract, PEG-10 Rapeseed Oil, Olea Europaea (Olive) Oil Unsaponifiables, Niacin, Phenoxyethanol, Sorbitan Isostearate, Diazolidinyl Urea, Triethanolamine.