Smoker's Face: Nothing to Smile About
Everybody knows smoking is bad for your health. Now here's something you may not know: Smoking is bad for your looks.
It's true. From your rosy cheeks to your pearly whites, experts say, smoking doesn't just push you toward an early date with the grim reaper. It also makes you look that way.
Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco recently looked at 227 nonsmokers, 456 former smokers and 228 smokers, all between ages 40 and 70. Their findings? Female smokers were three times as likely to have moderate to severe wrinkling as female nonsmokers. Male smokers had double the wrinkles of male nonsmokers.
The sources of damage...
- Scientists concluded that cigarette smoke and its component chemicals can damage your skin by:
- Reducing the body's ability to form collagen, the main structural component of skin.
- Causing elastin, the normally long, smooth and elastic fibers in skin, to thicken and break apart.
- Reducing blood circulation, thereby reducing oxygen supplies to the skin.
- Cutting estrogen levels in women, causing skin dryness and cracking.
- Interfering with the skin's ability to protect itself from free radicals, unstable compounds with unpaired electrons or protons that some scientists blame for such processes as rust in metals.
Ultimately, these effects lead to what Douglas Model, M.D., has dubbed "smoker's face." In 1985, Dr. Model, of Eastbourne, England, surveyed 116 patients and identified about half the current smokers by their facial features alone. The smokers were much more likely to have heavily wrinkled faces, gaunt features with prominent cheekbones and shriveled gray skin, according to Dr. Model.
But wait: There's more.
Smoking also steals your smile, says Elizabeth Krall, Ph.D., assistant research professor at Tufts University's School of Dental Medicine. Working with statistics collected in the Boston VA Dental Longitudinal Study, which has been tracking the oral health of 1,118 men since 1968, Dr. Krall found that smoking doubles a person's risk of losing teeth.
Studying osteoporosis, Tufts nutrition researcher Bess Dawson-Hughes collected similar data on tooth loss in a group of 543 Boston-area women.
After accounting for variables such as age, sex, and alcohol and coffee consumption, Dr. Krall found that the cigarette-smoking women lost significantly more teeth. She speculates that cigarette use affects bone around the teeth, leading to tooth loss.
"We think it's very important to document smoking's effect on appearance," says Virginia L. Ernster, Ph.D., who led the University of California and other research projects into smoking's effects on physical appearance. "It might be more of a motivating factor than avoiding cancer in antismoking programs because people can relate to things that they see."
