If you have sore cracks at the corner of your lips which is making everyday essentials such as eating, drinking and speaking excruciatingly painful, you may well have the common condition, angular cheilitis.
Successful natural treatment for cracked lip corners needs to discover the underlying cause as well as stopping the condition returning.
Also, fast, symptomatic relief is very important simply because this condition is so very painful.
Although you can buy over the counter treatments and these will give some symptomatic relief, what they will not do is cure the condition completely.
There are various causes of cracked lip corners and with a little analysis, you might be able to discover just what the trigger has been in your particular case and therefore eliminate it.
The main reason why the condition develops is due to excess moisture at the mouth edges, but treatment for cracked lip corners is not always as straightforward as you might think as usually, bacterial and fungal infections develop and without decisive and proper action, it will just get worse.
Some likely causes include badly fitting dentures, having folds of skin at the mouth edges (often caused by weight fluctuations or the aging process), thumb or finger sucking, pen biting or loss of facial muscle control.
In addition, vitamin B12 deficiency can be a cause as can a lack of iron.
Treatment can include having ill fitting dentures corrected, using anti-nail biting liquid which tastes bitter, on the ends of pens or on fingers.
Where no scabbing has occurred and the condition is very mild, try putting a thin film of petroleum jelly on the cracks or even try some unperfumed lip salve for temporary relief.
The key to successful natural treatment for cracked lip corners is starving the fungus and bacteria of what it needs to survive.
By following the correct steps, you could be cured of angular cheilitis by the following day.