A new study confirms what many of us already know about smoking: it ages you.
Researchers used the annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio to round up the 79 identical pairs of twins as part of the study. 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.
The study also featured pairs where only one sibling smoked.
As reported by "Today", the plastic surgeons 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.
Smoking reduces oxygen to the skin, which also decreases blood circulation, and that can result in weathered, wrinkled, older-looking skin, Dr. Bahman Guyuron, lead author of the study said in the study press release.
According to "Today", the logic behind the study and others similar to it, is to appeal to people's vanity. Years of studies about the dangers of cancer, heart and lung disease, or the hazards of second- and third-hand smoke have not been enough to get people to quit. The same tactic has been used in an attempt to warn young people away from tanning.
"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," Dr. Robin Ashinoff, medical director of dermatologic surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, told "Today".
The study reinforces that stopping or cutting back on smoking can make a difference in all aspects on your health, including the skin damage to your face. Researchers found twins who smoked just five fewer years than their siblings had younger-looking faces.
