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Quit Smoking
Articles
Smoking
Can Make You Look Old
Everyone wishes
to look good. The way we look and present ourselves plays an important
role in many areas of our lives, especially when it comes to building
good first impressions. Unfortunately, smoking does little to promote
your general appearance, in particular, your complexion.
Smoking narrows
the small blood vessels in your skin, thus reducing healthy blood
flow. When this happens, the delivery of essential nutrients like
collagen, vitamins and minerals are greatly reduced. Smoking also
activates a type of enzyme which break down collagen, the main
structural protein in the skin that keeps it elasticated.
Over time, your
complexion deteriorates. Your skin will look dry, old and wrinkled. On
top of that, frequent squinting from cigarette smoke leads to more
wrinkles. You may look as though you're always frowning.
In addition, most
smokers experience the darkening of their lips, a typical tell tale
sign of a smoker. Other experts add that smoking worsens dark eye
circles.
Smoking also
affects the healing process of your skin. Wounds and scars tend to
take longer time to heal. Smokers are at higher risks to infections
and scabbing from operation wounds or open injuries.
Recent research
on smoking confirmed that smoking increases one's risk of developing a
common form of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma. There are
over 1.2 million new cases of squamous cell carcinoma in the U.S. each
year.
Fortunately,
these changes and risks are reversible. Upon quitting smoking, the
skin begins to recover immediately. Within hours, circulation restores
and repair continues each day. Risk of skin cancer is also
reduced.
So to summarize,
if you continue to smoke,
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You'll end up
looking many years older
-
Your skin
develops poor healing abilities
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People can
identify you as a smoker from the way you look
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You are
exposed to high risk of developing skin cancer
Don't let smoking
ruin the way you look. Stop the damage now before its too late.
**References
Action on Smoking and Health
National Library of Medicine
SkinCancerInfo
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