At the risk of alienating Carrie Coon and ejecting her from my (imaginary) friend group, I must fact-check her statement about lip and nipple tissues: They’re not the same—underneath lip tissue, you’ll find salivary glands, while underneath nipple tissue, there are milk ducts. But they are quite similar.
“They’re both more sensitive compared to other parts of the skin, with thinner protective layers,” Pooja Rambhia, MD, a board-certified dermatologist at UnionDerm, based in New York and Greenwich, Connecticut, said in a phone interview. “Both of them are also prone to getting dried out.”
In fact, Lupo notes, “The lips are even more delicate than the nipple.” That’s because lip tissue is less keratinized—meaning, it has less of the fibrous protein keratin, which provides a barrier that protects against water loss.
That’s where lanolin comes in.
“Lanolin is a wax-like substance that mimics human sebum, allowing it to reinforce the skin barrier,” Rambhia explains. “It’s also able to hold up to twice its weight in water and reduce transepidermal water loss by 20% to 30%.”
And because lanolin is thicker than plant-based oils and other common lip balm ingredients, it works similarly to an occlusive (basically, an extra-thick emollient that sits atop the skin instead of sinking into it). Compared with those oils, “Lanolin has a higher molecular weight and a complex ester and fatty-acid-based composition,” Rambhia says. “Those large, complex molecules form a thicker, occlusive barrier that resists quick absorption and provides long-lasting moisture retention, which makes it particularly effective for prolonged protection, especially on dry or chapped lips.”
Perhaps the only common skin-care product that beats lanolin in preventing transepidermal water loss, Rambhia adds, is petroleum jelly. However, she says, “In my opinion, [lanolin] provides slightly longer-lasting protection compared to petroleum jelly, because its waxy texture simply provides longer-lasting staying power on the skin. A lot of people lick their lips constantly and don’t realize it, and petroleum jelly is just easier to lick away compared to lanolin.” (Petroleum jelly is also derived from fossil fuels, so some folks may want to avoid it for environmental reasons.)
In my testing, I was instantly impressed by how long the Lansinoh cream lasted atop my lips. Even when I applied what I considered to be a thin, non-goopy layer, I could still feel it 75-ish minutes later. (I tried not to lick my lips, but I did rub them together a whole lot.) Once the cream was fully absorbed, the resulting softness likewise lingered for much longer. I was reapplying only a few times a day, as opposed to the too-many-to-count reapplications I’d typically do with a lighter lip-care product.
So score another one for Carrie Coon: She’s right in that you probably don’t have to apply it as often as you might need to apply other, slicker balms.
