Our lips perform multiple functions. They help us eat and drink by creating a seal to hold food in the mouth while we chew. They also help babies latch on and create suction for drawing milk. Our lips also help us communicate verbally and through facial expressions. However, beyond their functionality, our lips also make up a large part of our appearance, and how other people perceive us. Plump, full lips are considered youthful and attractive, while thin and wrinkled lips are not. Unfortunately for many of us, we start to lose our lip fullness as we age. Luckily, there are simple, non-surgical ways to restore it.
Loss of Lip Volume
Although they are fairly simple in appearance, lips are actually quite complex. They are composed of muscle tissue, skin, fat, nerve endings, and blood vessels, and each needs the others for the lips to function properly. The plumpness and fullness of your lips is based on a variety of factors including:
· Heredity;
· The amount of fat in your lips; and
· The amount of collagen in the skin. Collagen gives skin its strength and integrity. It also attracts water which can make your lips plumper.
As we age, we lose some of the fat in our lips and in our cheekbones, making the skin in those areas wrinkle and sag. We also reduce our collagen production, which makes skin even more prone to wrinkles.
Increasing Lip Volume
There are several ways to naturally improve lip volume from creative cosmetic techniques to natural injectables. The method you choose depends on your preference and budget.
Creative Makeup
Makeup is one of the most affordable ways to improve the appearance of your lips. By tracing slightly beyond the natural outline of your lips with a liner that close to your natural skin tone, and then filling them in with the color of your choice, you can automatically enlarge your lips. You can increase the effect by using lipsticks which contain ingredients plump your lips by drawing moisture into them.
Exfoliation
Exfoliation removes dead skin cells to brighten the skin and reduce the appearance of wrinkles. When performed around the lips, it can make the lips look fuller. Baking soda is an excellent exfoliator, as well as a gentle cleanser for your face and your body.
Lip Augmenting Devices
Lip augmenting devices vary in price, but many can be found in a similar price range to high-end cosmetics. Some products, like the ones on the Angel Lift site, augment the lips by removing the wrinkles around the lips to make them appear fuller. Others, like Candy Lipz use gentle suction to make the lips fuller.
Peptides and Hyaluronic Acid
Peptides and hyaluronic acid are both natural products that can increase the volume of your lips. Like makeup and the lip augmentation devices, both types of products are fairly affordable.
Peptides are amino acids, the base materials in all proteins, which reduce the appearance of wrinkles around the lips.
Hyaluronic acid is a carbohydrate compound that attracts water to make your lips look fuller and plumper.
Collagen Injections
Collagen is a protein that your body makes naturally. It contributes to the integrity and the shape of your lips, as well as their fullness. Collagen injections have to be done professionally, but they require no surgery and only take a few minutes to do.
Collagen injections are more expensive than the other options, but they also tend to last several weeks, versus the other products, which you have to use or apply every day.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several natural ways that you can make your lips fuller and plumper. Many of them can be done at home, and don't require a large financial investment.
