It is the same flaking as beard dandruff, in the one place on your face you cannot hide it, and it usually has an extra cause. The skin under a mustache gets wet and dried more times a day than skin anywhere else on your face.
Why the mustache specifically
Everything you drink goes through it. Coffee, water, soup, a beer. Each time it gets wet and then dries, and that cycle strips the skin underneath more effectively than washing does. Skin that is repeatedly wetted and air dried ends up drier than skin left alone.
Then add the rest of it. You blow your nose and wipe, which is abrasion right on that patch. It sits directly under the nostrils, so it gets warm damp air all day. And it is two inches from other people's eye line, so flaking that would go unnoticed on a jaw is obvious there.
The fix is skin, not hair
Nearly everyone treats the hair and wonders why nothing changes. The flakes are shed skin, so whatever you use has to reach the skin. Press a fingertip through the hair until you feel skin, then work along the lip in short strokes. If the product is sitting on top of the mustache you are conditioning hair and treating nothing. The longer version of this.
A routine that works
- Stop washing it with bar soap. Soap is the most common single cause. Anything gentler will do.
- Comb it down while damp to lift the loose flakes out rather than leaving them to show later.
- Warm a very small amount of balm until it turns clear, and put it on the skin under the hair, not the hair.
- Blot after drinking. Small habit, and it removes most of the wet and dry cycling that caused it.
More on using balm on a mustache.
What this is not
If it is greasy yellow scale rather than dry white flakes, or the skin under it is red and sore, or the same thing is happening in your eyebrows and the creases beside your nose, that is seborrheic dermatitis and it is a medical thing. A balm helps dry skin. It does not treat that, and I am not going to tell you otherwise. See a doctor and get the right treatment.
Which tin
This is directly under your nose all day, so scent choice matters more here than anywhere else. If you are at all unsure, or your skin reacts to things, Raw has no fragrance in it at all. Why unscented exists.
Made by hand in small batches in Wakarusa, Indiana. Seven ingredients, and 5% of every sale goes to FreedomSystem, which connects veterans through authentic camaraderie and meaningful programs.
