Quit Smoking and Look Younger

Smooth Healthy Skin

I was once walking down the hospital hallway and I saw some people who were visiting their loved one. They had just come from a "smoke-break" and were going back up to the patient's room. I turned to my fellow therapist and told him the visitors looked like they were ridden hard and put up wet. Their skin was all wrinkled and leathery, their facial expressions were weathered and they talked like they were in their eighty's or ninety's. To my surprise they were the sister and brother of one of my patients. My patient was not that old and in fact, his siblings weren't either.

We see this all the time. People who look a lot older than they are. Perhaps they're sickly or just have that kind of job which takes its toll on the skin. But a new study out of Milan Italy (no surprise) looks at the affect of smoking on a person's skin. This is the first such study that I know of that looks at this relationship. I could be the first to tell them that smoking does have a deleterious affect on skin. I've seen countless examples like the one I just described, where the smoker looked older than they really were, in large part, because their skin looks horrible.

Serri and others in the journal Skinmed, evaluated the stop smoking benefits on the skin of 64 caucasian women who smoked and who were followed by a team of psychologists, nutritionists and dermatologists. Various details were measured at the beginning of the study, then at 3, 6 and 9 months. A complex scoring matrix was used to evaluate the age of the participant's skin. They looked at the pigmentation of the skin, the lines, vascular state, elasticity, texture and color of the skin. All this information was put into creating a skin age.

The results were as you'd expect. After the program was complete, there was an average reduction of skin age compared to actual chronological age of about 13 years. Contrast this to the results at the beginning of the study which showed the skin age 9 years older than the actual chronological age of the participants. This represents a 22 year shift in the age of the skin.

The scientists concluded that quitting smoking improves skin conditions and the skin-aging effects. This is yet another example of unbiased information which proves the negative influence smoking has on our physiological systems. It is truly not just a disease of the lungs or heart, but is a multi-system attacker. So if you are looking for the fountain of youth in yoga or nutrition, just try putting down those cigarettes and watch the years melt away.