smoking

Wed, January 19, 2005 - 7:03 PM It's as damaging as the sun but easier to reverse... just don't do both!
Make sure you take a multi-vitamin, omega 3 and 6 acids and drink TONS of water. You can bounce back from smoking pot or cigarettes quicker if you are a teen or an early-twenty something, but some experts think even that is far too optimistic...

A total of 350 subjects, aged between 20-69 years, were enrolled in the study and divided into three groups: 123 non-smokers, 160 who were currently smoking and 67 who were past smokers.

Subjects responded to questions relative to their status of cigarette smoking, weight changes, average time of exposure to the sun, (both recreational and occupational)over one month. In addition, researchers questioned whether the subjects had undergone previous medical and facial cosmetic surgery.

Both computerized image analyses of silicone skin replicas and clinical visual measurements were used in the study. A severity score was assigned to each subject based on a predetermined criteria.

A higher degree of facial wrinkling was observed among current smokers by comparison with non- and past smokers. Those who had smoked heavily at a younger age in the past had less facial wrinkling than current smokers. From the age-adjusted analysis a relative risk of moderate to severe wrinkling for current by comparison with non-smokers was determined as 2.72 (confidence interval C1: 1.32 ?3.21, P< 0.05).

Current smokers with more than 19 and 11-19 pack years of smoking had relative risks of 2.29 (C1: 1.14 -4.1, P, 0.05) by comparison with 1.75 (C1: 1.54-3.67, P<0.05) among non smokers.

Image analysis of facial skin replicas, indicated mean values of Ra (Arithmetic average roughness), and Rt (distance between the highest and lowest values) were higher among current smokers by comparison with non- and past smokers in all age groups.

Researchers considered this indicated a strong correlation between cigarette smoking and skin wrinkling. Additionally, it was observed that there was microscopic superficial wrinkling (Ra and Rt) in younger current smokers aged between 20 and 39 years.

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