[DiamondSmiles]

Smoking Really Does Make You Look Older, a Twin Study Confirms

Melissa Dahl

TODAY Health

October 29, 2013

You know smoking doesn’t do any favors for your face – or your lungs, or your heart, or just about any other part of your body, for that matter! – but a new study of twins hints at the ways the habit makes you look older than you really are.

In what is perhaps the best detail of the study, researchers used the annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, (the "Largest Annual Gathering of Twins in the World!"), to round up the 79 identical pairs they include in the report.

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.

They 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, which was published today in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Smoking reduces oxygen to the skin, which also decreases blood circulation, and that can result in weathered, wrinkled, older-looking skin, explains Dr. Bahman Guyuron, a plastic surgeon in Cleveland, Ohio, and the lead author of the study.

The logic of research like this and others like it is this: If threats of cancer, heart and lung disease, or the dangers of second- and third-hand smoke aren’t enough to get people to stop smoking, or to never start in the first place, then why not try appealing to people’s vanity? (The same tactic has been used in an attempt to warn young people away from tanning.)

But if you’re currently a smoker, the point of this research is not to make you feel bad. Because stopping or cutting back on the habit now can make a difference -- in all aspects of your health, including the skin damage to your face.

“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,” says Dr. Robin Ashinoff, medical director of of dermatologic surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.

Photo 1 - The twin on the right is a smoker; the twin on the left is a nonsmoker. Notice differences in nasolabial creases.

Photo 2 -Even the twins who smoked just five fewer years than their siblings had younger-looking faces, the study shows.

Photo 3 - Both twins are smokers. The twin on the right smoked 14 years longer than his brother.

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery/American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Probably drink in excess and sun, too.

[durt]

imo, none of them really look 'smokin'

JK, good post DS!

[DiamondSmiles]

Originally Posted by durt ↗

imo, none of them really look 'smokin'

JK, good post DS!

I know! None were my type either

Thanks, durt

[Annbiz]

I barely notice a difference lol yea I'm a smoker

[XxMutilatedxX]

Wish I had a twin now, see how old I'd look ahaha
That's pretty interesting though, the toll cigarettes/drugs can do to your appearance.
It doesn't look like a very drastic change though compared to what methamphetamine can do, but, you can definitely the damage cigarettes has done. Lots of wrinkles on the heavy smokers.

[DiamondSmiles]

Originally Posted by XxMutilatedxX ↗

Wish I had a twin now, see how old I'd look ahaha
That's pretty interesting though, the toll cigarettes/drugs can do to your appearance.
It doesn't look like a very drastic change though compared to what methamphetamine can do, but, you can definitely the damage cigarettes has done. Lots of wrinkles on the heavy smokers.

I wish they had stated the ages!

Usually, you can tell, especially with older women, (most likely because of the makeup), you can see the small lines around the mouth.

The face appears as if it is being sucked in through the mouth.

[DiamondSmiles]

Originally Posted by Annbiz ↗

I barely notice a difference lol yea I'm a smoker

Agreed, with the man and older woman

The necks of all seem to show a big difference.

I'd like to know the age of the younger women. I'm guessing 35-40-ish.

[pacha1]

any type of smoking is for FUCKING IDIOTS

[AnaleFaust]

I'm 26 and I look 15. I could smoke 40 a day and I'd still have a baby face

[HeadlessHorseman]

Nice study, I'm amazed they all stayed the same weight.