Smoking really does make you look older

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Smoking really does make you look older, a twin study confirms
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Melissa Dahl TODAY

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Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery/American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
The twin on the right is a smoker; the twin on the left is a nonsmoker.

You know smoking doesn’t do any favors for your face – or your lungs, or your heart, or just about any other part of your body, for that matter! – but a new study of twins hints at the ways the habit makes you look older than you really are.

In what is perhaps the best detail of the study, researchers used the annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio (the "Largest Annual Gathering of Twins in the World!") to round up the 79 identical pairs they include in the report. A panel of three plastic surgery residents compared the faces of the twins, one of which had been smoking for at least five years longer than the other.

They identified a few major areas of accelerated aging in the faces of the smoking twins: The smokers' upper eyelids drooped while the lower lids sagged, and they had more wrinkles around the mouth. The smokers were also more likely to have jowls, according to the study, which was published today in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

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Plastic and Reconstructive Surge / American Society of Plastic Surg

Both twins are smokers. The twin on the right smoked 14 years longer than his brother.
Smoking reduces oxygen to the skin, which also decreases blood circulation, and that can result in weathered, wrinkled, older-looking skin, explains Dr. Bahman Guyuron, a plastic surgeon in Cleveland, Ohio, and the lead author of the study.

The logic of research like this and others like it is this: If threats of cancer, heart and lung disease, or the dangers of second- and third-hand smoke aren’t enough to get people to stop smoking, or to never start in the first place, then why not try appealing to people’s vanity? (The same tactic has been used in an attempt to warn young people away from tanning.)

But if you’re currently a smoker, the point of this research is not to make you feel bad. Because stopping or cutting back on the habit now can make a difference -- in all aspects of your health, including the skin damage to your face. Even the twins who smoked just five fewer years than their siblings had younger-looking faces, the study shows.

“We tell people, as soon as they stop smoking, the repair to not only to their skin but their lungs, their heart vessels -- it starts to repair itself,” says Dr. Robin Ashinoff, medical director of of dermatologic surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.

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Plastic and Reconstructive Surge / American Society of Plastic Surg
The twin on the left is a nonsmoker and the twin on the right smoked for 29 years.
 

TnWatchdog

Senior Member
Messages
7,099
I would agree as I worked with heavy smokers and they looked like shit. Wrinkles and the look 10 to 20 years above their current age...not a pretty picture. Sorry smokers...just quit. Now a days it is a health issue and a economic issue...too expensive.
 

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Khaos

where the wild things are
Messages
1,101
Sorry smokers...just quit.

I'll stop smoking tobacco, when you stop smoking cannabis.

But really, I hate it when people complain about smoking. They're trying to pass a bill in the Michigan senate to outlaw smoking in private homes and private cars. Bullshit, if I want to light up in my home, I'll do so. Its my home, I pay the bills here, not you.

When it comes to smoking, you have a better chance of dying from being hit by a bus tomorrow, than you do dying of lung cancer, which takes years to develop. You aren't going to get cancer by just smoking a single cigarette, you have to continually smoke them, for well over 15-20 years to develop anything remotely close to cancer.

I feel bad for those that are forced to be around it, yes. Parents who smoke in the same room as their children, I don't believe people should have to tolerate that, but at the same time, you shouldn't be telling us to quit. We'll smoke, its legal to do so. I don't mind having to go outside, if I'm at a friends house who doesn't want me to smoke in his house. But I'm still going to smoke, its my right.

And one thing I absolutely hate, is when people tell me to "quit" fuck you. I'll quit when I'm damn well ready to. And don't you dare sit there and tell me to "just quit" and how "easy it is to quit smoking" talk to any former smoker and they'll tell you this: Its a bitch to attempt to quit smoking. You can't just "quit"

I can get just as mean and nasty as a cannabis smoker can get, when you start telling me to "just quit"

And if you want to go a couple rounds with me about "unhealthy" it is. I can list far more unhealthy things in life that give you a more larger chance of dying from them than just a little cigarette smoke.

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BlastTyrant

Senior Member
Messages
2,585
Lol Khaos I'd hate to be anywhere near you if you tried to quit.

I got friends who smoke, i use to but i quit when it was 4$ a pack "I thought that was too spendy" And i do highly disagree with them trying to ban smoking in Private Residences and Cars. NOW if a child under the age of 12 is in the car then they should be able to pull the person over and fine them. But usually if they had been around smoking for that long they are probably smoking them selfs by now.

Where i work it is against regulations to smoke ANYWHERE on the property even in your vehicle.

BUT i will agree people should not be allowed to smoke in Restaurants "Could care less about bars after 9" Nor near Play grounds.
I'd even go as far as to agree with a Ban in State parks. Because lets face it, not only is it disgusting smelling but, believe it or not, it is unhealthy for everyone around you "yes, yes i know there are worse things you could be shoving in your mouth" and not only that people just toss the butts on the ground even with a trash can near them "yes, yes i understand people throw worse than that on the ground" But i do believe that if you want to kill your self go for it. It is my same belief for the Seat belt law, it is at my own discretion to wear one or not, i do not need the safety police to tell me what to do.
 

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