Want to Look Older? Start Smoking!

Lisa picked up smoking in her sophomore year to fit in with her smoking friends. Like most youngsters it started as an ‘occasional’ drag but soon became a habit. And before she realized it, she was smoking a pack a day. And she always thought, “I can quit whenever I want.”

It wasn’t too long before Lisa started looking 10 years older than her age. She was only 28 but her face was marked with wrinkles, especially around her eyes and mouth... It was very evident from her face and hair that she was a smoker: smokers not only develop premature wrinkles and sagging facial skin, they also experience premature thinning and graying of hair. Not only was Lisa’s skin wrinkled, it was also discolored - her complexion sallow instead of a healthy pink...

A paradox of desire, the cigarette that Lisa picked up to look cool became the single most important factor responsible for her far-from-youthful appearance.

Accelerated Aging
Ok, let’s hit you with more of the bad stuff: cigarettes have a direct impact on the skin’s aging. Experts say smoking accelerates the normal aging process of the skin, contributing to wrinkles. Smoking causes narrowing of blood vessels in the outermost layers of the skin. This impairs blood flow to the skin, depleting it of oxygen and important nutrients, such as vitamin A. Also, carbon monoxide in cigarettes bonds with oxygen and keeps it from getting to the skin cells, causing both wrinkles and discoloration of skin. Just 10 minutes of cigarette smoking decreases the body and the skin’s oxygen supply for almost an hour. Smoking also damages collagen and elastin - fibers that give your skin its strength and elasticity. As a result, skin begins to sag and wrinkle prematurely. These effects become evident only after few years of smoking; and guess what, they’re irreversible.

A study has also revealed that smoking inflicts damage even on skin areas which are not normally exposed to sunlight, like the inside of the upper arm. It also affects the healing process of your skin. Wounds and scars tend to take longer time to heal. Your risk of getting skin cancer also increases manifold if you are smoker.

Smoking = Staying Thin
It’s an unforgettable image: Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, lighting up and hitting good old Bogart with that husky voice and the ‘look’. Tough-as-nails Bogart was suddenly putty, wasn’t he?  Sexy as it might be, smoking does a lot more harm than good for your figure. Often, young women smoke in a misguided effort to stay thin - thanks to the myth that smoking helps you maintain a healthy weight. The truth, however, is that cigarettes kill your appetite and rob the lungs of oxygen, making it harder to exercise normally. If you do happen to keep your weight down because of the appetite-suppressing effects of cigarettes, you will have poor muscle tone. You may be thin, but you won't be in good shape. Healthy weight and smoking just don’t go together.

What Happened to Anti-Aging?
If there’s one thing humankind has been searching for with a persistent, insatiable hunger, it’s for the fountain of youth. Anti-aging elixirs and treatments abound, and every year, millions go under the knife, get Botox™, and more. While there may be nothing wrong with wanting to improve our appearance, correcting defects and boosting self-esteem, it seems strange to think that with a few lifestyle changes, we can actually delay the appearance of those dreaded seams and wrinkles. And the ‘stop smoking’ mantra is a powerful one – it’s sure to help.

Addicted Before You Know It
The warning labels are always printed in large unfriendly letters, but most of us just keep going. We become addicts before we even realize it. And it doesn’t help that people we look up to and admire often do or say things that just make smoking so… so cool somehow (it is said that someone asked Frank Zappa “Why do you smoke?”, to which snapped Zappa “You think you’re going to live for ever?”).

Well, the only thing left to say is that we all know it hurts us eventually. So what we’ve got to do is work out what’s more important: lighting up to feel good, to get through stress, to be cool or whatever; or looking and feeling younger for longer. Once we’ve got that sorted, really sorted, it’s clear what we’ve got to do: stop smoking! It’s hard, but that’s just it.