Stupid Beeswax Allergy

My allergies were difficult for me to understand, since I had never had them in my entire life and they overlapped with other things that made them really difficult to pinpoint.

For instance, I have very sensitive skin and eczema issues! So does my mom. She's had absolutely terrible eczema and similar things; she doesn't use soap at all, and long ago, developed some kind of allergic response to rubber. She can't use rubber gloves or touch balloons. So I deal with skin irritation and random red patches appearing at will often. It made the fact that I was having an allergic reaction hard for me to see.

Also, the allergies I've developed either closely followed or overlapped with (and sometimes I even speculate were somehow caused by) a case of mono I caught in 2011!

I feel like I got sick and never really got better, even after the several-month recovery window of mono. Although I did kick the cough, the sniffles hung around perpetually. I feel like I still have mono in a way, and I'm still learning how to deal with allergies in general, let alone eczema.

But about beeswax...

After blowing my nose more than any one human being should in the harsh winter of 2011, my entire face felt chapped and hurty. This isn't abnormal for my skin in winter. It's tough to keep it in line normally, let alone when the heater's kicking and drying me out. Thank goodness I had my lip balm... or so I thought!

Although I was dealing with dry skin, eczema, and allergy-related ear infections also, my lips -- especially my upper lip -- hurt badly.

Randomly, in what seemed like just a day or two, the skin above my upper lip turned red, as if the pain was radiating from my lips into the skin surrounding them.

I'm not a lip-licker, so I blamed this on how much I had been blowing my nose. That whole area was red and tired of tissues.

As I've had eczema for years, I made sure to baby this irritated area. I thought it would go away if I just made sure to keep my lips and skin moisturized.

(In general I felt like my body was falling apart and I had a lot to worry about. Ear infections were the highest on my list. As a young child I was prone to them, but I'd only had one or two in my teen/adult life before this onslaught of allergies. Suddenly I was battling ear infection after ear infection. I mean, constant ear trouble!)

It didn't take too long for all the skin around my mouth to become red. It felt like it was burning. It hurt so badly, and it hurt even worse if I didn't have lip balm. I didn't know what was going on, but I thought it was chapped badly at first. The skin flaked a lot, so I gently exfoliated, washed and moisturized with the gentle products my sensitive skin requires. But whenever I looked in the mirror, I looked like I had some kind of clown face paint on. My lips were entirely encircled in red, inflamed skin. It was a halo of pain.

It's because I love you that I am sharing this horrible picture. This is covered in makeup, even.

Because I didn't understand what was going on, I dealt with this for months.

I bought medicated balms, organic balms, things in pots and tubes, different brands. I threw everything that was minty or cooling away, thinking they were maybe irritating me. I started taking multivitamins in the hopes it would help my skin. I tried drinking more water and moisturizing the area religiously in case my skin was just wildly dehydrated. It seemed like I could not keep that area hydrated at all. I dreaded waking up in the morning because I knew my mouth would be hurting so bad. I couldn't leave the house without a lip balm because my lips would start hurting quickly without one, and it was actually the worst pain!

In the meantime, although my lips themselves weren't super chapped, I couldn't eat anything salty or anything that required me to open my mouth too wide!

This red skin made a real impact on my life. I dealt with it daily. I couldn't cover it with makeup; makeup wouldn't stay on. It just flaked off quickly. (As you may know, dry skin is something that you can't apply makeup over.) It really hurt to even dab or brush any kind of makeup to it.

Trying to cover it up made me realize that the skin was actually kind of swollen. You could feel where it was inflamed, like a ridge! It was so ugly. Even if I tried to cover it up, here was nothing I could do about trying to conceal it entirely. I felt like people were staring at me whether I had the Red Ring or had caked flaking makeup over it. I felt the worst I've ever felt about myself.

Months went by. I lost track of the amount of times I told my mom what I thought the problem was. "It's the minty balms that irritate my lips! It is because I need to drink more water. I think it's my moisturizer. I think I'm malnourished, so I got some vitamins! I have bought organic balm in case there is some kind of chemical irritating me!"

I don't really know when, but sometime in those painful months, I also developed a strange eczema-like patch on the back of my right hand that itched like crazy, although it never cracked or peeled or shed skin in any way. I tried not to ever even touch it, but I would scratch it in my sleep. Moisturizing it didn't do anything. It was just red and rough. Since my skin is sensitive to things like soap, I thought, "Well, I'm tucking my hand against pillows and sheets when I sleep... it's probably irritated because of that." And since I have eczema on my face and my mom had a history of really terrible eczema on her hands, I thought it was eczema, and it was just another thing on the list of what was wrong with me at the time.

I also broke out into some light hives at one point... it just went on forever.

I became truly concerned when my Cetaphil Gentle Daily Skin Cleanser, which is literally the only soap I can put on my face with no terrible repercussions, began to burn the area around my mouth. This happened at the very beginning of 2013, after nine months of the skin around my mouth being bright red. I almost started crying in the shower because I felt so despondent.

Because I was so worried about my gentle cleanser burning that skin, I went to Lord Google.

In retrospect, I don't know why it took me so long to Google about it... I just kept hoping it would go away and was guessing and trying so many different things. Everyone's skin and physiology is so different. What worked miracles for one person's skin will wreck another person's skin. There is no one miracle product. You really have to know your own skin, especially if it's sensitive.

I started out Googling for sensitive skin products, trying to find a high-rated lip product in particular. It was not clear to me that lip products could be the problem rather than the solution, because in general my skin has been problematic and oversensitive. I just thought if I could find something for sensitive skin, I might need to try that instead.

What I found was a blog post made by a woman with a similar issue, notably the red skin around the mouth. It looked fairly similar to my problem, but people in the comments section seemed to be getting it for different reasons -- after spending time outside, especially. I thought that the lip thing could really be anything, and people's comments were so varied on what they had decided their problems were and what was causing the problem. Most people had only suffered with symptoms for a week or a month and it would go away and come back. I'd had this red ring of pain around my lips for nearly a year, with no respite. It never went away.

The general consensus was that it was a beeswax allergy, although this conflicted directly with people who were swearing by Burt's Bees and encouraging everyone to just get some Burt's Bees. Some people said to leave it alone and it would peel away and flake off on its own. Some people had specific lip product recommendations, but other people still would claim a specific problem with that specific lip product.

But one lone commenter had voiced that a red patchy rash had developed on the back of her right hand -- exactly where mine was. That, more than anything, got my attention. I hadn't really associated the red skin on my hand with the red skin around my mouth.

I got out every single lip product I had, and sure enough, literally every single one had beeswax as an ingredient. I began crying at that point. I had wasted a bunch of money on lip products and months upon months of time trying fruitlessly to deal with my skin.

EVERY SINGLE THING I QUARANTINED TO THIS PLASTIC BAG OF ANGER HAS BEESWAX. WHEN I WAS DONE PUTTING EVERYTHING WITH BEESWAX IN THIS BAG, I HAD NO LIP PRODUCTS LEFT.

(On a hunch, I also looked at the ingredients on my multivitamins, which were the gummy kind. Beeswax!)

People recommended Aquaphor, which is petroleum-based. I bought some Aquaphor. My skin was already so tormented that Aquaphor simply burned it, too. More tears, more wasted money.

I was so, so angry. I had been taking those vitamins cluelessly for seven or so months hoping that they would help. I had been using lip balm all my life with no issues, but I had been extra dependent on it and had acquired tons of it because my lips were suddenly hurting so badly. It still seems so unfair to me that junk I was investing hope in, thinking they were going to help my pain, was just perpetuating the pain. It's just ChapStick! It's not supposed to hurt you!

But another distressing thing is that STRAWBERRY LIP BALM IS MY JIMMITY JAM. I love it so much.

Taking this one small thing from me is akin to telling someone who loves a specific type of food that they may never again eat that food. I like strawberry lip balm more than I like any food! I'd pick it over a book or movie or candy. I don't wear lip gloss (when I did, it was Bonne Bell Strawberry Sparkler). I don't wear lipstick. I wear no makeup on a regular basis. Lip balm is the only product I use every day besides, like, my medications.

Because I spent months sobbing and slathering on lip balm to already very irritated skin, I am pretty sure that I made myself allergic to beeswax via constant exposure, if only because allergies can inspire other allergies. This is apparently a thing. Some cross-pollination type thing can occur with products you use. I.E., if you are allergic to one thing in a product, you may become allergic to other things in the product because your body starts to associate the two ingredients. Because I've developed allergies in general, I probably developed an allergy to one of the things I put on my body the most while my body was busy freaking out.

I didn't even know if they made lip balm that didn't have beeswax in it, though.

At the grocery store, I was lucky to find one beeswax-free lip balm. But I was miserable about having to use it because it was scentless and flavorless and felt gross. But my lips still ached for balm, so I used it. After Googling and going to Whole Foods, I found a couple more. (Later, for my birthday, my aforementioned best friend got me a bunch of lip balms off of Etsy, and my little sister also ordered some balms for me. I guess my crying out in the night for strawberry lip balm must have tipped them off.)

I quit using any product with beeswax at the end of Janaury 2013. You could set February 1, 2013, as the official "start" of my life without it.

At that point, nearly my entire 29th year of life had been lost to allergies. If I wasn't battling chronic ear infections (I now fend them off before they can begin with a 50/50 mix of hydrogen peroxide and white vinegar and this has been very successful for me) then my skin was in agony. It affected what I ate, where I went, how I felt about myself. I really feel like I just lost a year of my life to scrambling around, wondering what was wrong with me, wasting money trying to find something to help.

After a month using beeswax-free balms, I could see visible improvement to my reddened skin and the pain, in comparison, was almost gone. The skin was still a bit smarty and stressed. Of course it was! I'd irritated it for almost a year!!

Three months into using beeswax-free balms, I turned 30. As on my 29th birthday I'd been afflicted with Bozo Mouth, I was just glad to not be suffering so much. The swelling had gone down and I could wear makeup!

Six months into using beeswax-free balms, I was still seeing slow but sure improvement to the discoloration around my mouth. The red patch on the back of my right hand still bugged me every now and then, but it was much less, too.

Ten months into being beeswax-free, I'm almost back to normal. The skin around my mouth isn't red anymore. It still feels like it might take a while for me to not be frightened to touch it and I might still peer for ghosts of discoloration, but it doesn't hurt and it isn't red. Nobody looking at me without makeup on would think, "Man, easy on the lip-licking and mouth-breathing, weirdo." Also, the patchy red rash on the back of my hand has disappeared totally.

I still have (indoor) allergies! Obviously those aren't going to go away. But I'm grateful that finally the cycle of pain is broken. I'm grateful to be testing out new balms without fear of what they might do to me. And I have a lot to say about the balms I'm trying. At first it seemed like there were hardly any beeswax-free lip balms out there, but as I'm discovering, I'm not alone!