Can we develop a dependency on lip balm?

Lip balms are everyday products that are easy to carry around with you. Their function is simple: to hydrate and protect the lips from external aggressions, such as cold or dry air. Lip balms are often formulated with emollient agents, ingredients that help promote the accumulation of water in the stratum corneum, as well as healing actives, such as panthenol or Centella asiatica, useful for preventing chapped lips. However, despite all their benefits, they are sometimes accused of causing dependency.

This concept of addiction originates from the following observation: some individuals, after starting to use a lip balm regularly, describe a need to apply it more and more frequently. This behaviour would suggest that this type of product creates a vicious cycle where the more one applies a lip balm, the more one wants to use it, which corresponds to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) definition of addiction: "a state of periodic or chronic dependence on substances or behaviours". However, at present, no scientific evidence supports the idea that a lip balm can cause a true addiction.

• Lip balms do not contain ingredients that could potentially induce dependency.

  There are no active ingredients in a lip balm formula that could cause an addictive phenomenon. Unlike substances such as nicotine or opioids, the components of lip balms do not alter the brain's signalling pathways and do not lead to addictive behaviour. The feeling of needing to apply a balm repeatedly is therefore more related to individual perceptions than to a real biological mechanism.

• The need that some people may feel to constantly apply lip balm is more akin to a habit than an addiction.

  The notion of dependency could also stem from a confusion with the legitimate need to protect lips damaged by the cold. When we apply a lip balm, we often experience immediate comfort and a reduction in tightness. This positive response could, in some individuals, encourage more frequent applications, not out of necessity, but to recapture this pleasant sensation. While some people on certain forums describe an addictive behaviour, it seems more likely to be a deeply ingrained reflex or a tic rather than an addiction in the medical sense of the term. However, we cannot rule out that, in rare cases, some individuals may develop a psychological attachment to lip balm, as they could do with any everyday object. However, this is more likely the result of underlying anxiety and is not related to the product itself.

While the notion of a lip balm addiction may seem plausible at first glance, it is not grounded in any solid scientific basis.