Passive smoking causes skin damage…

According to a recently published report, you don’t have to smoke to get ’smoker’s face’

Any non smoker can recite the unattractive results of a night out in a smokey bar or restaurant - the lingering smell of smoke on your clothes and even worse on your hair - not to mention the health risks.

Well you may have reluctantly put up with all of that in the past - but what if you found out that passive smoking caused skin damage?

According to a lab study conducted a couple of years ago by top skin care company Clinique Laboratories - passive smoking is conclusively linked to a type of skin damage which causes a condition commonly known as ’smoker’s skin.’ or ’smoker’s face’ - dry, coarsened skin with a grey or yellowish, wrinkled look.

According to the research, smoke triggers oxidization - a killer for skin cells. Its the toxic mix of 3000+ chemicals in cigarette smoke that come into contact with the skin’s surface - penetrating the outer barrier and unleashing free radical damage on the skin cells.

It happens to smokers and now we know it happens to us if we hang out with smokers.

Skin cells damaged by cigarette smoke lose their ability to repair and regenerate and the result is a reduction in the skin’s collagen and elastin - two essentials for the smooth, plump unwrinkled skin of our youth. What you get in exchange is wrinkles, dryness and discoloration. Not pretty.

All is not lost according to Clinique - if you act now you can reverse some of the skin damage. Follow a simple three point plan to avoid further skin stress and protect the skin’s surface barrier from further damage from passive smoking. First step: you should reduce or eliminate your exposure to: excess UV light, air pollution (especially cigarette smoke), psychological stress, sugar and alcohol.

As a second step, Clinique recommend enhancing the skin’s surface barrier with an anti aging moisturizer with high levels of effective anti aging ingredients. Current thinking would include: peptides to stimulate collagen production, ceramides, fatty acids, and shea butter.

Finally, the Clinique skin experts strongly recommend you start protecting your skin from within. Their top recommendations - drink lots of green tea, eat foods rich in vitamin C and resveratrol. This three setp program will help you deal with the risks from passive smoking next time you find yourself exposed to it.

Of course - many of these skin saving tips will sound familiar to you if you’ve looked at the top ten anti aging tips on this site, visited our green tea page, or generally just browsed around. We’ve been shouting about the wonders of green tea as an anti aging drink for a while now - but did you also know that drinking green tea helps speed up your metabolism and shift the abdominal flab?

Clinique may be the first to come up with the proven connection between passive smoking and skin damage but nearly all skin experts have agreed for some time that cigarette smoke is bad news for your skin.

Waste no time in putting their recommendations into practice or ’smokers skin’ may become ‘passive smoker’s skin’ before you know it.

Related articles:

• Smoking ages skin and not just on your face
• Quitting smoking - honesty really is the best policy
• Female New Yorkers are quitting smoking