Tripeptide plumping lip balm.

"I think this is a pretty solid lip plumper, but the marketing might just be a little bit misleading. There are three types of ingredients in this that make it work. First, there are the Tripeptides, which are in the name. They say they're 6% Tripeptide Complex, and Inkey do this quite a lot, the complex is mostly not Tripeptides. The Tripeptides will be way less than 6%. The Tripeptides are Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1 and 38. And these are in a lot of skincare products. They are basically modified bits of broken down proteins. And they're meant to go down deep into the dermis, which is like the lower layer of skin, and they're meant to thicken the skin by making it produce more collagen and elastin. There is a bit of evidence for these working, but they're usually more like watery, serum-like products. I don't know if there's any evidence of these getting into skin from an oil based product like this balm. And they do need to get quite deep down into skin because it is trying to get to that dermal layer. But even if they were working, I don't think this would really explain that plumping effect, even though the marketing does really make it sound like they're doing the work. Your dermis is really thin and these sorts of ingredients would take months to have any sort of effect. But they're claiming a 20% increase in volume in two weeks. So I think what's way more likely to be working is temporary plumping ingredients which aren't listed in the product name because they are a lot less exciting."

"This is the Inkey List tripeptide plumping lip balm. It plumps the lips by going back to basics. The best way to achieve plumper lips is by flooding them with hydration. If we damage and dry our lips with the wrong ingredients, then in the long term our lips are going to look a lot less plump and hydrated. This is just taking it back to basics with a really nice formula. It's around 10 pounds, 12 dollars, so a good price point. This contains multiple different peptides alongside some hyaluronic acid, some other humectants, and some calming, soothing ingredients. They did a study and said people felt 40 percent plumper as a result of using this for two weeks. I was really impressed. Loads of beneficial ingredients, very few, in fact zero nasties in here."