Smoking and Your Skin

Filed in archive General Health on March 21, 2007

You've probably heard that smoking makes you look old. It adds wrinkles to your face and dries out the skin. Well, recent studies show that it's not just your face that suffers. Smoking dries out and damages the skin all over your body. A recent article from CBC News Canada reports:

dermatology researchers in the U.S. studied the effects of smoking all over the body, including skin protected from the sun.

"We examined non-facial skin that was protected from the sun, and found that the total number of packs of cigarettes smoked per day and the total years a person has smoked were linked with the amount of skin damage a person experienced," Dr. Yolanda Helfrich of the University of Michigan Medical School, the study's lead author, said in a release.

So, how do you quit this body destroying habit? Well, let me tell you it ain't easy. I've been through it. I finally quit, after about 45 years of smoking, in 1997 - 10 years ago. I was up to two packs a day and getting up in the night to get my fix. After trying the gum and the patches, I finally quit cold turkey. The first couple of weeks were rough, and, believe it or not, I still get the occasional craving! But I've never regretted the decision. I got my life back.

There's lots of information on the web if you search. For instance, The Tattered Coat has one person's story of an ongoing battle to kick the habit:

Quitting smoking has become something of a side job for me: over the past seven years, I've quit many, many times. Through hard work and perseverance, I've also relapsed many, many times. These experiences have made me something of an expert in the field.

Give quitting a try. Believe me, a few weeks down the road, when your food tastes better and you can once again smell the roses, you won't regret it.