Stopping smoking rejuvenates your skin

Posted on Mon, 1 Aug 11

Smoking accelerates signs of skin aging such as wrinkles, discoloration and dryness by about a decade more than your chorological age. A stop smoking program has found that quitters reduce their skin biological age by 13 years.

In Milan, Italy a group of women took part in a "Quitting Smoking Rejuvenates the Skin" stop smoking campaign. The women received free counselling, consultations with a dietician (to reduce risk of weight gain) and regular assessment with a dermatologist. Using signs of skin aging (such as lines, vascular and pigmentation state, elasticity, brightness and texture of the skin) a skin “biological age” was calculated to help assess the benefits of giving up smoking.

Before quitting the skin biological age was calculated to be on average 9 years older than their chronological age. Remarkably, stopping smoking reduced the skin biological age by 13 years after just nine months. Also, the majority of women lost or maintained their body weight suggesting that when coupled with dietary counselling quitting smoking does not necessarily result in weight gain.

Comparison of results before (A) and after 9 months (B) for one of the studied patients.

“The message that we wanted to send out with this campaign was a positive one” commented the study investigators.” Instead of performing a sort of psychological terrorism by listing all the possible illnesses—including the fatal ones—that smoking can cause, we have emphasized the opportunity of im­proving the appearance of one’s skin simply by quitting smoking.”

Source:

Serri R, Romano MC, Sparavigna A. "Quitting smoking rejuvenates the skin": results of a pilot project on smoking cessation conducted in Milan, Italy. Skinmed. 2010 Jan-Feb;8(1):23-9.