It's a question we hear often, and it's a fair one. Toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, whitening trays, and aligners are all obvious extensions of dentistry. Lip balm is less obvious. The answer is simpler than you might expect.
Because Dentistry Isn't Just About Teeth
Anyone who has had a long dental appointment knows that lips take a beating. They dry out, stretch around instruments, and crack in the air and suction of the operatory. Yet lip care has traditionally been an afterthought in clinical settings. The typical solution is a generic, petroleum-based balm from a supply catalog.
Dr. Meggan Wehmeyer, founder of Farmer's Body and a practicing periodontist, knows that firsthand. But she didn't set out to start a custom lip balm company. It found her.
It Started With a Colleague
Farmer's Body began as a skin care company. Dr. Meggan, who also holds a diploma in organic skincare formulation, was already making lip balm for our retail line. She formulated it the way she'd want anything she recommends to patients: ethically sourced plant oils and butters, no petroleum, nothing unnecessary.
Her own patients who tried it started asking, "Where can I buy this?" Then a dental colleague tried it, loved it, and asked a different question: could she put her practice's name on it and give it to her patients?
That first custom order is where our work with dental practices began.
Lip Balm as an Extension of Patient Care
In dentistry, lips are part of the treatment area, and comfort shapes how patients remember a visit. Practices now use custom lip balm as a patient thank-you gift, an addition to whitening kits, a welcome bag staple, a community event giveaway, and a retail item patients actually use.
It's also one of the few gifts that sticks around. Lip balm lives in purses, pockets, and glove compartments, with your practice's name on it for months.
A Dentist's Standard
Being dentist-founded shows up in the details, and our formulations are evaluated differently. Our balm is unsweetened, because sweet flavors invite licking and licking makes dry lips worse. It's latex free and gluten free, made with candelilla wax instead of beeswax, and made without petroleum or lanolin. There's an unscented option for patients sensitive to flavors.
The same care goes into the label. We design it from your logo, send a proof before anything prints, and develop our SPF options with regulatory awareness, with every SPF label going through an FDA compliance inspection before it goes to press.
From One Practice to Thousands
What began with one colleague's request has grown into a woman-owned Vermont brand serving dental practices, wellness studios, boutiques, and corporate events nationwide. We've made more than 500,000 custom lip balms since 2020, and every one is still mixed, poured, and labeled by hand in small batches in Vermont.
So, Why Would a Dentist Make Lip Balm?
Because dentistry is about more than teeth. It's about noticing the small discomforts patients have and doing something about them. Lip balm just happens to be one of the most useful ways to do that.