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. (more…)

1. Iron helps form haemoglobin, the oxygen carrying red pigment in your blood. It also aids protein metabolism and is essential for brain development and growth. It is found in meat, seafood, poultry, whole grains, beans, peas and dark-green leafy vegetables like spinach.

Ninety per cent of all iron used is recycled because it is so well conserved in the body. This means that you don’t have to keep replacing it all the time. This, of course, calls into question the widespread use of iron supplementation. Iron overload (hemochromatosis) is the most common inherited disease. When excess iron is present, the body’s immune system becomes severely compromised. Vitamin E helps protect against iron-generated free radical damage. So a high-quality antioxidant would be beneficial for balance if you have excess iron levels. (more…)