Lifestyle Choices

Forget the Cigarette

Smoking also makes skin age rapidly. This is probably because of a substance called benzopyrene, which is found in cigarette smoke and which uses up the body’s supply of vitamin C rapidly, making it unavailable for the support of healthy collagen. So the skin wrinkles earlier. Dr. Harry Darnell investigated the relationship between wrinkling and cigarette smoking for almost twenty years, looking at eleven hundred patients between the ages of thirty and seventy. He found that the skin of smokers wrinkles and ages up to twenty years sooner than that of nonsmokers. But the problem with cigarette smoke doesn’t end there. For it is not only the smoker whose skin can suffer from it. So can the nonsmoker’s. She may take in considerable quantities of benzopyrene, tar, carbon monoxide, and other irritating substances just by being in a room with others who are smoking. In a recent study it was shown that in a room of smokers the carbon monoxide level from the leftover cigarette smoke in the air can be as high as twenty to eighty parts per million. The supposedly acceptable level of this poisonous gas in industrial air is only fifty parts per million.

Carbon monoxide in the air is bad for skin in another way, too. It binds together with the red blood cells‘ hemoglobin, tying up its oxygen- carrying capacity for up to twelve hours. This can lead to oxygen starvation in the skin’s cells, much as a high-fat diet can. There are other smoking dangers too of course which, although not directly related to skin aging, probably contribute to allover lowered health—such as the fact that smoking is known to be a contributor to lung cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease, strokes, bronchial diseases, and emphysema. Some dermatologists concerned about the dangerous effects of cigarette smoke on skin recommend that every smoker supplement her diet with additional vitamin C at a rate of 25 milligrams for each cigarette she smokes. But if you are serious about preventing aging, give up smoking altogether—no matter how difficult it seems and no matter how many excuses you can make for yourself about why you think you can’t just now.

 

Watch the Alcohol

Alcohol is bad for skin too. Each gram of it contains 7 calories—more than any other kind of food except fat. The calories it gives you are empty of nutrition, as they convey no vitamins or minerals or other essential nutrients to the cells of your body. What they do do, however, is stimulate the appetite so that in addition to their calorie-supplying abilities they also tend to make you consume more food. And overeating is one of the worst things you can do to age your skin rapidly. Alcohol also robs the body of its supply of B vitamins, needed for skin health, and depletes resources of vitamin C. As well as all this, alcohol acts directly on the cells of the skin to cause damage.

Freely soluble in water, it attacks the living cell by forcing it to lose its water and to coagulate its protein. This can result not only in cellular damage but also cellular death. And the detrimental effects of alcohol don’t stop there. Dr. Mel* Linsely has shown that alcohol also brings about sludging in the capillaries. Instead of the millions of red blood cells circulating freely, they tend to pile up and clog these tiny blood vessels, interfering with circulation so that the cells don’t get enough oxygen. As a result of this oxygen starvation, cellular deterioration occurs, and small hemorrhages, or leakages of blood from the capillaries, take place. This sludging phenomenon interferes with skin cell metabolism, as it does with that of cells elsewhere in the body. The tiny ruptures that take place in small blood vessels as a result of the sludging are also a major factor behind the appearance of broken veins on the face. While it is true that the occasional glass of good wine may do nothing but good in relaxing you and improving digestion, more than this is bad for the long-term youth and health of your skin.

 

Slough Off the Dead Cells

Men’s skin ages less rapidly than women’s. One of the reasons for this may be that a man shaves every day and the act of shaving itself removes several layers of the stratum corneum. A slowing down of cell reproduction is one of the things that happens when your skin ages. Many dermatologists believe that exfoliation—the deliberate removal of the old dead cells on the skin’s surface—will help keep skin younger-looking. It stimulates cell reproduction in the basal layer and refines the skin’s surface, making it look more translucent and smoother, getting rid of the mottled surface that comes with age.

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