Indian Wedding Makeup

Most lip-plumping products promise to make your lips tingle, but the latest gloss to hit the market contains a numbing agent so potent, it has been named after a hospital pain killer.

Morphine Lips' new balm contains four per cent benzocaine, an over-the-counter painkiller usually found in cough sweets and mosquito bite sprays.

The $17.50 product, which is 'designed to create the perfect kiss', causes the lips to tingle and go numb for a short period.

Potent: Morphine Lips' balm contains four per cent benzocaine, an over-the-counter painkiller usually found in cough sweets and mosquito bite remedies

The company website advises customers to 'use Morphine Lips before making your move and going in for the kiss. After your lips touch it will leave your victims lips numb and their hearts racing.'

It explained: 'A kiss is one of the most intimate moments two people can share. It determines if there is chemistry and a bad kiss can ruin everything.

Pucker up: The mango and peach-flavoured balm leaves lips numb for approximately five to seven minutes

'Morphine Lips was designed to help create a perfect kiss and one that they will never forget. Where it goes from there is your move.'

Morphine Lips' founder, Sheen Moaleman, admitted to Fashionista.com that the original prototype - which contained 12 per cent lidocaine (a local anaesthetic) was so strong it 'numbed your whole face'.

The mango and peach-flavoured balm that has reached shelves, however, leaves just the lips numb, an effect that lasts approximately five to seven minutes.

The Los Angeles-based company's name, Mr Moaleman's website reveals, was inspired by the 2006 Kill Hannah song Lips Like Morphine, which, it reads, 'paints the picture of a kiss so powerful that it leaves you numb and gasping for air.'

Packaged in a sleek black tube, the balm formula also contains moisturising ingredients including  vitamin E, jojoba oil and blackcurrant seed oil.

Mr Moaleman warned that the Morphine Lips balm is approved for use on the lips only - although he said some users have applied it on other areas of the body with success.

He revealed that thanks to the early success of the balm, a lip gloss formula has been added to the product range, and is scheduled for release this summer.