I used a lip pump and it’s ruined my mouth

Like the majority of young women out there, I want fuller lips. Nothing too extreme, but I’d love for a plumper pout.

For Christmas, my parents bought me an amazing selection of MAC lipsticks which encouraged me to research into natural lip enhancing devices. I came across Bio Lips – a company that prides itself on providing “a safe, instant and easy alternative to lip injections or the use of chemicals”.

The woman’s lips on the website looked absolutely spectacular, so I naively went ahead and spent just over £27 on the ‘Medium O’ – a natural lip enhancing device made of plastic which you place over your mouth and suck – and BioLips Natural Serum, a lip plumping gloss you’re supposed to use after the suction cup. When it arrived, I was ecstatic. I immediately started using the suction cup every few hours and using the lip gloss once or twice a day. And, at first, it all worked fine. My lips reacted perfectly well, and I didn’t encounter any of the horror stories you hear of. But after using the products for about month, something awful happened.

What harm could it do?

I woke up one morning, and my boyfriend looked as me he said something was seriously wrong with my lips. I looked in the mirror and started wailing: I looked like Jackie Stallone. My lips had swollen a hideous amount over night and the insides of my lips were red with blood.

I could hardly move my mouth, and surrounding my lips were rashes. I contacted BioLips immediately and sent them pictures of my lips. They apologised and gave me some lengthy advice. They said: ” When this happens it means it was either too hard or too long. These need to be use very gently at first with time building up as you go. It’s like your lips need to get trained and used to doing this. So, you should get very gentle suction – where it’s barely holding on and then relax your lips into the enhancer – after 15 seconds, check and then repeat if there is no colour change. It takes about a month before you really get to understand how much is too much and the more you do it the better and longer it will last.”

But I only used them for a few seconds at a time anyway, and I had been using the product for over a month, so I was a little confused as to why this was happening. Nevertheless, I thanked them and eventually my lips healed, after two weeks of ridiculously dry and cracked rashy lips. Stupidly, I used the product again after I had healed, and the same thing happened, so I got rid of the suction cup.

This happened after continuous use

Me before using the lip kit

The other day, I decided to use the lip gloss which I hadn’t used in several weeks, and seeming that I thought the root of the problem was the suction cup, I didn’t see anything wrong with using the serum. When you put it on, it tingles and burns a little, which is apparently completely normal as it stimulates something in your lips and brings the blood to the surface, but I was used to this so I thought nothing of it.

I went to the library, and all of a sudden my lips started to go numb and I could feel that something was wrong. I went to the toilets to look in the mirror and I realised all hell had broken loose on my mouth – exactly the same thing had happened but this time the rashes were more extreme and already starting to crack. I was devastated.

I contacted BioLips again, as I was extremely concerned over the welfare of my mouth. They replied: “Your lips have to inflate because that’s how the increase in volume is achieve. If they kept bleeding, then you have used it too harsh, even we advised you not to. We have never had a severe case like this. Please use it with less pressure.That’s why you also had cracked lips.”

Nice rash

They informed me they had never had any complaints about the natural serum and that because it is made of natural ingredients, I cannot have an allergic reaction to it unless I am allergic to any of the ingredients, which I am not.

They continued: “In the end, you just seem too sensitive to use our products and we are truly sorry for that. But not every product is appropriate to everyone. We hate having disappointed clients because we are not a huge company that mass produce these products. We make every product by hand, including the lip enhancers, which are poured,sculpted,painted and so on and it just pains us to see even one disappointed client”.

All my friends tell me how stupid I was for ever buying such a product, but I had read such incredible reviews about BioLips that I thought it would be completely safe because of how much they go on about it being a ‘natural enhancer’. My advice would be to love the skin you’re in and don’t buy into such products as sucking your lips into a device could leave you with lifelong damage that no amount of Vaseline could eradicate.