Swollen Lip

Lips are a very important organ because we are using it for food intake and they are situated at the mouth level. Lips are a tangible sensory organ and they are helping us in articulation of speech.

You can do the difference very easy between the upper lip (labium superioris) and the lower lip (labium inferioris) due to the fact that the lower lip is a little bit bigger than the other one. The lip skin is very soft and sensible and it doesn't have any kind of glands to protect it. Because lips cannot kill the pathogens and keep the normal body temperature, they can dry and crack more often then other parts of the body and very easy. I am sure that many of us had at least one swollen lip and we wondered what are the reasons for this. Well, there can be many reasons but the most common are: any kind of injury or medications or sometimes when the teeth are changing their position.

In medical terms the swollen lips are named Myxedema or Angioedema. The inflammation of the lip is named Eczema or Glucagonoma and the enlargement of the lip known as Acromegaly or Muccopolysacharidosis.

Swollen lip may occur as well if you are allergic to some food components or you are very sensible to temperature differences. In some desert regions due to the extreme heat and sun radiation may provoke damages to the lips like redness, drying and swelling. These can increase the chances to lip cancer.

Usually the symptoms for the lips inflammation are cracking, redness, irritation state, pain and the factor is the lack of the vitamin B2 in our body. In case of Acromegaly or Muccopolysacharidosis the symptoms are: cracking and bleeding and a color change of the lip from its normal to a dark red.

In some cases the swelling of the lip may appear because of a viral infection. This type of lip swelling is known as lip herpes and it is very painful and ugly looking because it has many blisters in both the lips. The smoking persons, the persons who consume a lot of alcohol and those who have deficiency of oral hygiene are in danger of carcinoma. You can recognize this disease due to the blackening of the lips.

Your upper lip may swell due to some stomach problems like acidity, ulcer or heartburn. These are the result of excessive intake of alcohol, potatoes, sugar, spices, caffeine.

When your swelling is caused by allergy you don't have to worry because it can be treated pretty easy with some anti inflammatory gel but only after you went for a visit to your doctor. There are some cases where the swelling may not heal very easy and it can be remove only by surgery or radiation therapy.

If you know that you are allergic of some food you should always check it the composition before you ate. But you can also be allergic to some materials from your mattress or your pillow and these may cause some local allergy signs. If you have these signs on other parts of your body you should check immediately a doctor.

The best remedy for your swollen lips is to have a good diagnostic to can treat them as soon as possible.