What Causes Mouth Lines and What to Do About Them?

Mouth lines may be caused by cigarette smoking, overexposure to sunlight and/or habitual facial expressions.  Allowing the skin to become too dry can be a contributing factor.

There are two reasons that cigarette smoking causes wrinkles.  First is the repeated pursing of the lips and squinting to keep the smoke out of the eyes.  Cigarette smoking causes many health problems.  If it is the thought of having more wrinkles that helps people quit, then it’s a good thing to know.

Second (and possibly most important) is that the smoke causes increased production of free radicals, which are a cause of aging on the molecular level.  Exposure to sunlight causes free radical production, too.

Free radicals are sometimes referred to as radical oxygen or nitrogen species.  The molecules natural exist in the cells of the body, but under normal conditions, they do no harm.

If they become frenzied or excited, as occurs during exposure to smoke and UV rays from the sun, they start to act abnormally.  They try to “steal” electrons from other molecules, from the cellular membranes and from DNA strands.  If the radicals are not neutralized by antioxidants before this occurs, the result is cellular and DNA mutation.

Mouth lines don’t form overnight.  They form gradually over the years.  If they are not caused by free radical damage, the likely cause is lost elasticity.

When you smile or purse your lips, a wrinkle does not form immediately, because the skin’s layers are elastic.  They can stretch and snap back repeatedly over the course of one’s lifetime.

As we age, the elastic nature of the fibers in the skin’s dermis layer may decrease, to a certain extent.  But, there are two main reasons for lost elasticity.  One is decreased production of collagen and elastin fibers.  The other is decreased levels of hyaluronic acid.

If you have mouth lines, you have probably looked at some of the wrinkle creams on the market and wondered if they would help.  You may have even seen hyaluronic acid as an ingredient in some of them.

Well, most of the products on the market don’t help, because they don’t contain the right ingredients at the right concentration in the right form.  Hyaluronic acid, for example, does not help, because the real problem is an enzyme (hyaluronidase) that breaks it down, very quickly.

Some ingredients have been shown to inhibit hyaluronidase, which actually works to increase the skin’s level of hyaluronic acid naturally.  For example, wakame kelp may help you get rid of mouth lines by inhibiting hyaluronidase.  But, other ingredients are necessary, too.  It’s worth your time to learn about them, before you resort to cosmetic surgery.