LiveLongAgeWell

When a new patient walked into my office I would occasionally test myself, and try to guess just by looking at her face if she was a smoker or not. Usually I was right, and I could tell by looking for vertical wrinkles around the mouth, typically much more pronounced in a smoker. Why is that? Why should smokers have more wrinkles?

For skin to look good and alive, it needs to be nourished by the blood vessels that feed it. These vessels are the pipes that send fresh blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the skin, and then carry away the bad stuff. But in a smoker, the small blood vessels that feed the skin get irritated and inflamed from the cigarette toxins, and when the vessel walls get irritated, cholesterol can more easily stick to the inflamed surface. So like a pipe filled with any sort of crud, the flow of oxygen and nutrients decreases, and the skin basically loses its elasticity and slowly dies.

The same thing is happening to the smoker’s blood vessels that feed the heart and the brain, and everywhere else in the body. We just don’t see the pipe build-up problem like we do in the skin. In the heart the smoker can experience angina (heart pain) or a heart attack. In the brain, the smoker loses brain cells faster, and are more prone to a stroke. In the penis, since a firm erection depends on good blood flow to your organ, even if you aren’t impotent, your erections won’t be as good.

Besides wrinkles, a few more reasons smokers tend to age much faster:

•    The smoke slowly kills your lung capacity, so if you DO manage to get to an old age as a smoker (note that smokers live an average of 13 to 14 years less than non-smokers), you won’t be able to handle athletic activities well; even climbing stairs might become a chore. Bad lungs severely limit your ability for fun, and there’s no cure at all. Carrying an oxygen tank is a big hassle.

•    Smoking ruins your breath, stains and loosens your teeth.

•    Smokers have a much higher rate of osteoporosis and bone fracture.

•    The risk of that much advertised affliction, ED, or erectile dysfunction, is about 50% greater in smokers.

•    Smokers are twice as likely to get macular degeneration, a common form of blindness, as well as cataracts.

•    Many plastic surgeons will refuse to operate on smokers, because they heal from surgery so much worse, and have a much higher complication rate.

•    Yes, smoking can keep your weight down somewhat, but there are better ways, and is being a little thinner worth all the negatives, and let us include: a higher risk of baldness for men and for women, increased breast cancer and a two times higher risk of cervical cancer?