Smoking linked with aging on skin that usually is not exposed to sunlight

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In classic movies, cigarette smoking was used as shorthand to convey sultriness and beauty. In the real world, the connection between smoking and one’s appearance – as many studies have shown – has more to do with premature signs of aging and less to do with glamour and refinement.

A new study from the University of Michigan Health System adds another dimension to the link between cigarette smoking and skin damage. The study suggests that smoking may be associated with a higher degree of aging on areas of skin, such as that of the inside of the upper arm, that are not normally exposed to sunlight.

“We examined non-facial skin that was protected from the sun, and found that the total number of packs of cigarettes smoked per day and the total years a person has smoked were linked with the amount of skin damage a person experienced,” says Yolanda R. Helfrich, M.D., lead author and assistant professor of dermatology at the U-M Medical School. The study appears in the March issue of the journal Archives of Dermatology.

The researchers developed a photonumeric scale that can be easily reproduced by other medical institutions to measure the degree of aging on patients’ skin. The nine-point scale used information from photographs of the inside-upper-arm skin of the 77 participants.

Two medical residents and a medical student were asked to look at the photographs and assign a grade in which zero represented no fine wrinkling and eight represented severe fine wrinkling. The same three people reviewed photos of the participants one year later, and the scores were used to determine the level of increase in the skin damage.

Researchers also collected data about the participants from interviews, such as their age, ethnicity, history of cigarette smoking, use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, use of dietary or herbal supplements, sun exposure, sunscreen use, tanning bed use and, for women, how many children they had given birth to, hormone therapy use and oral contraceptive use.

Among the people in the study who were current or former smokers, they had smoked an average of about 24 years. In all, among participants who were 45 years or older, the degree of skin aging was found to be significantly higher in smokers than nonsmokers.

In the 45-65 age group, smokers had an average score on the photonumeric scale of more than two, while nonsmokers had an average score of less than one. In the 65 and older age group, smokers had an average score of about six, while nonsmokers had an average score of approximately four.

In addition to Helfrich, authors were Abena Ofori, M.D.; Ted A. Hamilton, M.S.; Jennifer Lambert, M.S.; Anya King, M.P.H.; John J. Voorhees, M.D.; and senior author Sewon Kang, M.D., all of the U-M Department of Dermatology; and Le Yu, M.D., now with Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

The study was supported in part by grants from the Babcock Endowment for Dermatologic Research and the National Institutes of Health.

Where the subjects they compared matched by socioeconomic status, profession, exposure to various chemicals at work and home, stress, diet, use of supplements (especially C, E, selenium),... ? Of course not. These kinds of junk studies are dime a dozen, since there is plenty of "research" money (the few crumbs of the billions looted from smokers every year and "invested" back by the thieves into the "scientific" smokescreen for their scam) for any university whore willing to please any comer.

Namely, the underlying biochemistry and physiology of the symbiotic intertwining between the human biochemical networks with those of tobacco smoke is highly rejuvenating for the human side and smokers would come out looking sharper, younger and healthier provided everything else except for smoking is kept the same between the subjects being compared.

Some of the underlyng biochemical reasons why smoker's skin (and every other marker of youthfulness) would come out younger in any apples to apples comparisons:

a) Nicotine stimulates and upregulates growth and branching of blood vessels (via upregulation of vascular growth factor), especially of capillaries, which improves the nutrient delivery and cleanup (antioxidant & detox enzyme supplies) to all tissues, including brain and skin (provided person's intake of nutrients and supplements is adequate).

b) Tobacco smoke (not nicotine) upregulates production of glutathione (our body's master antioxidant and detox enzyme), to nearly double the levels of nonsmokers.

c) Carbon monoxide in low concentration (as delivered in tobacco smoke) acts as a signaling mechanism in human biochemical networks to increase tissue oxygenation and reduce inflammation.

d) Nitric oxide in low concentrations (as provided by tobacco smoke) acts as neurotransmitter, signaling to cardiovascular system to increase blood supplies to peripheral tissues (this is the biochemical mechanism behind the Viagra effect).

e) Tobacco smoke upregulates levels of "youth hormones" DHEA and testosterone and reduces their decline with age.

f) The highest quality brands (Japanese) of the miracle skin supplement and rejuvenator, Conezyme Q10 are produced from tobacco leaf, which is still the best source of natural Co-Q10 (since it includes the full synergistic complex which the cheaper synthetic production methods cannot replicate).

g) Deprenyl (selegiline), which mimics the selective MAO B inhibitory properties of tobacco smoke (this is not related to nicotine) and is used in smoking cessation "therapies" for that reason, has become all the rage in the life-extension circles, due to its almost magical rejuvenating powers.

h) Nicotinic acid, along with its salts and various organic compounds, are skin-protective agents, used cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry.

The listed effects are just a tip of the iceberg of the biochemical magic bundled in the ancient "gift of gods", tobacco.

The pharmaceutical industry (along with its cosmetic offshoots), which nowdays funds (and then hypes through its mass media and bureaucratic shills) almost all of the antismoking "science", would rather you bought myriads of their own pharmaceuticals, each trying to substitute, often clumsily and with numerous undesirable side-effects, for just one little piece of tobacco magic.

Consequently, the junk "studies" funded by these competing interests, like the one above, will compare smokers who may be working in a metals smeltering plant or miners, with poor nutrition and other habits (excessive drinking), for whom tobacco smoking is a lifesaver, a form of self-medication due to metals detox and antioxidant properties of elevated glutathione, with a non-smoking suburban yuppie, taking tonnes of health supplements, eating healthy foods, getting regular skin massage,...

In Japan and Korea, 60-70 percent of men smoke, yet they tend to look more youthful than Europeans or Americans with less than half of those smoking rates

'They' also tend to average darker skin types than Europeans and Americans and thus have less photo-aging, and that advantage is going to be most noticeable at sites both you, and the sun, get to 'look' at. This is precisely why the study looked at sun protected skin, unlike the global warming 'science' this study considered the big guy in the sky.

Many models smoke today, to control weight and their skin looks fine, too.

Modeling notoriously is a job for the young, whereas the aging changes from smoking take years to appear. Actors and celebrities are also disproportionately younger folks. They also are groups skilled at using makeup to hide their imperfections. Moreover 'models' is a biased group; if a smoker loses her looks she's unlikely to stay a model.

Certainly, not everyone's skin takes an equal hit from a given amount of smoking, just as heart and lung effects vary. The study seems to be considered important because it provides objective, well controlled confirmation that, on the average, there is an effect from smoking. My subjective, uncontrolled, empirical observation has long been that extensive deep wrinkles, out of proportion to more superficial, probably sun induced, 'aging' changes, disproportionately occurs in those patients with cigarette packs visible in shirt pockets or purses. There likely are some genetic differences in susceptibility and they likely are the same or similar genetic factors that determine which smokers get emphysema.

I'm not trying to be a anti-smoking Nazi (anti-tanning bed Nazi, maybe) about this, but rather encouraging that prudent conservative principle, caveat emptor.

There likely are some genetic differences in susceptibility and they likely are the same or similar genetic factors that determine which smokers get emphysema.

Emphysema and skin damage tend to correlate in smokers and nonsmokers, likely due to genetically defective or insufficient anti-inflammatory mechanisms (e.g. poor degradation of neutrophil elastase enzymes). Since smoking upregulates numerous aspects of immune system, including glutathione levels, neutrophil counts and anti-inflammatory enzymes, it is perfectly plausible that the positive statistical correlations between smoking and emphysema/skin aging is the result of people with genetically weaker aspects of immune systems who are also exposed to inflammatory/toxic agents, instinctively using smoking as a form of self-medication (similar to cats or dogs who will nibble on some particular grasses or leaves when sick), since it provides perceptible relief of their inflammatory/toxicity symptoms.

For example, in recent German study of aluminum workers (further discussed here), it was found that in the group of workers most exposed to aluminum dusts and vapors (the "potroom workers"), smokers had sixfold reduction in respiratory problems compared to never-smokers. Interestingly, the ex-smokers had twice as many respiratory problems as never-smokers, which twelve times more than current smokers.

Hence, the present or ex-smokers, must be those who are more sensitive to aluminum toxicity. They smoke since it perceptibly relieves their respiratory symptoms (e.g. their nearly double glutathione levels result in double aluminum excretion rates, thus it halves the effective aluminum exposure). Smoking is thus, within a group normalized for exposure (potroom workers), a marker for genetic sensitivity to aluminum dusts -- those who smoked did so because they needed it as a self-medication. Due to antismoking social and economic pressures, some smokers had quit and they ended up worse off than either smokers or never-smokers (those less genetically sensitive).

In other words, this result is completely analogous the relation between the use of sunblocks and sunburns -- those who use sunblocks more would be people who are more sensitive to sun (e.g. lighter skinned people) and who are exposed more (e.g. at work or at the beach). Hence, if one were to ignore exposure parameter, one will find that those using sunblocks will also have more sunburns (since many non-users will be among those less sensitive or those not exposed to sun very much). If one were now to randomly pick a subset of sunblock users and pressure them (as done with smoking) not to use sunblocks, they would end up with worse sunburns than users and never-users.

Associations of smoking with 'smoking related diseases', including emphysema, lung cancer, skin aging,... are also of this nature and antismoking "science" (mostly funded by pharmaceutical industry which profits in many ways from it) is very careful not to probe beyond such superficial, heavily confounded associations.

Due to the intense social pressures against smoking, aiming at the "average" person, those who still smoke are largely underclass, having more sun exposure, poorer nutrition, poorer genes, heavier pollution at work and home,... They smoke because smoking provides relief for their hardship (e.g. MAO inhibition, hence higher dopamine) and because it strengthens their immune and detox systems (doubles glutathione, 30% higher neutrophil,...), which helps them detox better in more polluted environments.

Despite protective and therapeutic effects of tobacco smoking, they will still have worse health (and more wrinkled skin) than those living in better conditions or having better genetic predispositions, thus those who don't need to smoke as a form of self-medication and who, under the present antismoking pressures, mostly won't smoke. Hence, smoking is a marker or a proxy for the level of hardship, resulting from interplay of genetic and exposure factors, and it is the hardship itself which damages their health and wrinkles their skin.

This is no different than observing that people using breathing ventilators have shorter life expectancy than the age-matched controls not using ventilators. Further, the former ventilator users will have longer life expectancy than the current users, but not as long as never-users. Yet, such associations still don't mean that ventilators shorten the life or harm those using them, let alone that we ought to forcibly yank the breathing tubes from the patients in order to extend their life-expectancy (unfortunately, the present antismoking hysteria, whipped up for profits by the not-very-hidden interests, amounts to similarly inhumane actions). Obviously, the effect would be exactly the opposite from the declared intent of such action. The poor "addicts" to the ventilators would squirm for their "fix" and would die sooner than the "control" group, left to use them as they wish.

That is precisely what randomized intervention trials with smokers show -- randomly selected "quit group" (in contrast to self-selected non-smokers or quitters observed in usual "studies") ends up with worse outcomes, including more lung cancers and heart attacks, than the "control group" (those left alone to smoke as they wish). After about half a dozen of such studies, which is how one can differentiate causal from protective/therapeutic role of smoking, the antismoking "science" has avoided them like a plague, sticking to what "works" (for getting the Big Pharma funding), the plain old heavily confounded, easily malleable statistical associations, the usual junk science.

With the large middle of the Bell Curve brainwashed and scared away from this ancient miracle plant, besides the left tail underclass using smoking as self-medication, there is also the right tail of the Bell Curve, people who are well off, who smoke because they know better and who can't be duped by the shallow propaganda optimized for the mediocre majorities. They smoke for the same reason they eat fruits, fish,... because they know that smoking is good.

They also understand explicitly or intuitively that, due to upregulation of immune, endocrine and neurotransmitter systems, smokers require higher doses of many supplements (especially C, E, selenium) and they take care of proper, good nutrition.

Since this right-tail group doesn't have as much need to smoke for self-medication (they live in healthier environments, have better nutrition and better genes), they will smoke at lower rates than the left tail underclass, but at the higher rates than the large mediocre middle. The net outcome of antismoking social engineering pressures is that smoking has become increasingly a marker of self-medication (it has always had that component, but in a much smaller proportion than today) and statistically heavily shifted toward underclass.

In fact, many harsh antismoking ordinances, such as those against outdoors smoking or even in private homes (e.g. Belmont, CA), have the unspoken motive of keeping the underclass or foreigners out of town or at least out of sight (just as in previous times, anti-opium laws were explicitly introduced to keep the Chinese away from 'white women', or anti-marijuana laws to keep Mexicans and Blacks, or anti-alcohol laws to keep Irish and Italians away). The drug prohibition laws today owe much of their support to similar, but now not spoken of openly, racist or class motives.

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