The Kids Are Watching You!

Stop! If you're my friend, I love your face anyway. I'm just saying, if you want to quit, and need some extra motivation, maybe we could come up with a few reasons. Actually, I've come up with over 1000. I'm working on 1440, one for every minute of everyday.

No lecture, here. I don't have the smoking addiction, but I'm addicted to stress, over achieving, chocolate, and procrastinating exercise. It's hard for me to quit anything. I'm very disciplined in many areas and a complete wreck in others. Isn't that life?

If you have a habit you want to quit, remember to find something good to replace it. Otherwise, you have a big hole in your routine, and you could "fall" right back into the habits of old.

If you're a parent, you already know that the kids are watching you. As soon as you let a cuss word rip, they are repeating it. The minute you throw a fit, they've got all the steps down. If you're sad, mad or depressed, they will soon be following in your footsteps. What are we saying? What are we teaching them, or those who love us?

While doing a bit of research, I've come across some characteristics of the smoker's face. No raving beauty, I'm still vain about my face. I slather on moisturizer, and clean routinely, but I keep it simple.

There are many reasons to quit smoking, but I thought if any of you have even half my vanity, this might get your attention:

"Smoker's Face" is defined as one or more of the following:

• lines or wrinkles on the face, typically radiating at right angles from the upper and lower lips or corners of the eyes,
• deeplines on the cheeks,
• numerous shallow lines on the cheeks and lower jaw.

If that doesn't bother you, maybe this will:

1)There is a subtle gauntness of facial features with distinctive underlying bony contours.

2)Redness of the face, with noticeable blood vessels, even orange or purple in appearance.

3)Lesser changes show as slight sinking of the cheeks. In some cases these changes are associated with a leathery, worn or rugged appearance.

4)The skin can become gray.

5)Some people have a bloated look that is also associated with alcoholism.

There is so much research about the effects of smoking on the skin, I had trouble narrowing it down to this statement: "...The changes in the colour and quality of the skin suggest a toxic process... In my experience, many people notice the ravages of smoking for the first time when it is pointed out to them that they can be identified as smokers by their faces alone." - Dr Douglas Model, British Medical Journal (1985);

Research had my attention pretty quickly.

Did you know that cigarette smoke contains more than 4000 toxins? And, many of these toxins are absorbed directly into the bloodstream and are taken by the blood right into the structure of your skin.

This happens immediately. We're only looking at how the skin is effected, I am not even going to discuss what it does to your lungs. I'm just focusing on our vanity.

Smoking cigarettes reduces the efficiency with which the skin can renew itself - smoking causes the narrowing of the blood vessels at the top layers of the skin, which in turn reduces blood supply to the skin.

It is the reduced blood supply which causes a reduction in the availability of oxygen (which is necessary for all living cells) and the removal of waste products, dead cell fragments etc... which provide the necessary environment for skin cell renewal.

Cigarette smoking causes the blood vessels at the top layers of the skin to constrict, reducing the oxygen level in the blood there. This thickens the blood and reduces the levels of collagen in the skin (it is actually because of this that smoking is also associated with slow or incomplete healing of wounds).

In fact, smoking a single cigarette can produce cutaneous (pertaining to the skin) vasoconstriction (decrease in the calibre of blood vessels) for up to 90 minutes. (Smith and Fenske, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatol)

Now, I don't know how many cigarettes you smoke a day, but if it's 20 or more, that's 1800 minutes with little blood flow to the skin. That's 1 day and 360 more minutes. That gives birth to a few wrinkles, I would think.

Recently, a British study took "...25 pairs of identical twins where one twin was a lifelong smoker and the other had never smoked. The doctors used an ultrasound technique to gauge inner arm skin thickness. The smoker's skin was a quarter thinner than that of the non-smokers and in a few cases there were differences of up to 40 per cent." (Twins study, St Thomas's Hospital)

Are you looking in the mirror yet?

SUMMARY OF SMOKING FACTS

• Reduces blood flow to the skin
• Causes the skin to look dry and sallow
• Encourages wrinkles to develop around the mouth and "crow's feet" around the eye
• Stains the skin and teeth
• Causes the stale tobacco smell
• Causes the premature skin ageing and wrinkling
• Delays wound healing
• Puckered mouth from smoking action
• Wrinkles around the eyes due to squinting to avoid the smoke
• Pale complexion due to nicotine constricting blood vessels
• Thinned, sagging wrinkled skin due to loss of collagen from free radical damage

I hope you will take a new look at your smoking habit. I will not join those who nag you because when I nagged my children, they only increased their smoking. The little snots. They quit on their own,

I will say, click here, for a beginning of the 1001 Reasons to Quit Smoking