Before we start discussing about lip care for habitual smokers let us first have look at what smoking does to your mouth and lips. Smoking is not only bad for your health, it spoils your facial beauty too by causing lip darkening, dry skin and it also sometimes cause what is commonly known as smoker’s lips. Smoker’s lip refers to those fine lines around the mouth. These lines, even though are not always due to smoking, the latter is responsible to a great extent for those drawstring like lines around the mouth. It gives your mouth a puckered look and makes you look much older. Now let us see what other damage smoking does to our health and looks.

Now we come to the part where we discuss how to get rid of this very ugly dark lips and get back its natural color. But let me tell you right from the beginning there is no magical formula and the process is long. I will shortly be telling you about products to lighten lips darkened due to smoking as well as some home remedies that usually helps in improving the color of the lip. But the first step is to give up smoking unless you want to become prematurely aged with wrinkled skin and darkened lips. No amount of costly cosmetic is going to help if you don’t stop smoking in the first place.

Home remedies for smokers with dark lips

1. Drink a lot of water. It will help flush out the toxin of nicotine from your body and help get back the natural glow to the lips.
2. Eat fresh fruits and green vegetables. Also learn how to do breathing exercises to get more oxygen in your blood.
3. Start taking vitamin E and C. These two vitamins help in speeding up tissue renewal so that new skin on lips start growing and the new lip tissue is healthy replacing the old nicotine stained dark lips.
4. 

   Petroleum jelly

   So now the obvious step to help new skin on lip to grow is regular exfoliating. For this you need to put any emollient like petroleum jelly on your lips. Leave it on for about 10 minutes so the outer layer of your lip skin is now ready to be removed. Use any old toothbrush with light and feathery strokes to brush your lips. Be gentle. This process will remove the top layer of dead skin from your lips helping in the growth of new pink layer of lip tissue.

5. Lemon is a natural bleaching agent. A piece of lemon wedge can be used to remove any dark spots that may suddenly appear on any of the body. Use this on your lips twice a day and see the result in a week. Just remember to rub lemon peel on your lips before the exfoliating routine. Otherwise if you rub lemon on newly scrubbed lips it will hurt. Don’t use the lemon piece too harshly. Use it with a light hand. Leave the lemon juice on your lips for about 10 minutes and wash off. You can apply a bit of honey afterward. Honey is a great natural moisturizer.
6. There is another wonderful product from nature that is good for dark nicotine stained lips of habitual smokers. This is our good old delicious strawberries. Eating strawberries will not only be a tasty treat it will also help lighten the dark lips as well as dark teeth that is a common problem with habitual smokers.
7. Apply almond oil every day for about a fortnight and see the result. Almond oil is used as a skin lightener. You can apply it to any body part to remove dark spots. This also helps in removing and smoothing away wrinkles and fine lines on lip. So regular application of almond oil on your lips works wonders not only for removing nicotine stains but also keeping them supple and wrinkle and lines free.
8. Topical application of vitamin E oil after exfoliating the lips help in new skin growth on lips and so you get baby soft pink lips instead of nicotine stained dark lips.
9. 

   Lip scrub

   There are lip scrubs available in the market. You can use them or you can try this homemade lip scrub which is my favorite.
   Take one spoon of honey and mix it with a pinch of baking soda. The mixture should be thick enough to spread without running. Apply it to your lips and leave it on for 3-5 minutes. Wash it off with plain water. While honey is a natural moisturizer baking soda is natural bleach. If all that doesn’t work I suggest you see a dermatologist (skin specialist).