Chapped lips, or chronic chapped lips (known as Cheilitis), is the condition when the lips become dry or cracked. Most often this occurs because of outside stimulus, such as cold or dry weather, licking your lips, dehydration or an allergic reaction.
Healing Chapped Lips with Hydrocortisone Cream
Treatments vary for this condition, but if you have tried everything you can think to heal your chapped lips and nothing has been effective, you may want to try treating them with Hydrocortisone Cream. Most of the time this cream must be prescribed by a doctor, however, the concentration of hydrocortisone is only 2 and a half percent. This makes the patient able to apply it up to 4 times a day, depending to the severity of the lip dehydration.
When this treatment is used, patients often see positive results. It should be understood that this cannot be substituted for a more permanent or long term treatment because it is a steroid, and there can be a few negative side effects that come as a result of prolonged steroid usage.
One of the major benefits of using Hydrocortisone Cream on chapped lips is that it can dramatically decrease the inflammation of the lips, making them easier to treat. You can also apply a small amount of over-the-counter hydrocortisone cream to the affected area to help restore moisture.
In the case of many patients, the Hydrocortisone Cream does work on even the most severe cases of chapped lips.
