Facial exercises for mouth lines

Doing lip exercises regularly helps develop the underused muscles around the mouth.

Lips always give away a person’s true age. As we age, our lips lose their fullness starting as early as our thirties, long before those pesky lines begin to appear around our mouths. Doing lip exercises regularly helps develop the underused muscles around the mouth, thus strengthening the muscles that create the lips’ outline. Exercises also increase blood flow to the lips, which helps plump them back out.

1. Pucker your lips slightly and try using your mouth muscles to bring the corners of your mouth together as close as possible. Hold for five counts. Relax and repeat five times.
2. Sit up straight. Purse your lips together and lift toward your nose. Hold for five counts. Relax. Repeat five times.
3. Sit up straight and face forward. Keep lips closed and teeth together. Smile as broadly as possible, without opening lips. Hold for five counts. As you relax, start puckering your lips in a pointed kiss. Hold for five counts. Relax. Repeat entire exercise 10 times.
4. Move your lips into a puckered kiss and while relaxing the kiss, keep your lips closed and curl your lips into your mouth across your teeth. Hold for a count of 10. Repeat five times.
5. Sit relaxed with your lips barely open. Pucker your lips outwards. While your lips are in the outward position, move your puckered top lip towards your nose. Hold this position for 10 counts. Repeat five times.

Now, eliminate lip wrinkles with your own lip balm.

Natural Lip Balm

Ingredients:

• 4 teaspoons cocoa butter
• 5 teaspoons sweet almond oil
• 3 teaspoons beeswax
• 2 teaspoons lanolin
• Natural fragrance oil
• 1 to 2 teaspoons of honey

Preparation:

Fill a small saucepan 1/3 full of water. In a Pyrex® measuring cup, add the cocoa butter and mix with the almond oil; add the beeswax and the lanolin and mix. Put the Pyrex measuring cup into the water, and heat over medium heat while stirring. When everything is melted, add the honey. Remove the measuring cup from the heat. Add the fragrance oil. Put the product into jars or tubes (to make things easier you can use pipettes), and let cool.

Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 31, Number 3, June/July 2012.