Zest England
The Top Seven Threats to Your Skin
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1. Too much sun
Twenty years ago, experts thought the quality of
your skin, and how it aged, was largely based on
genetic inheritance. So, if a 25-year-old woman
wanted to know whether her skin would age well,
all she had to do was look at her mother. Now, that
received wisdom has been turned on its head: if
you want to know how well your skin will age, look
at your lifestyle....
2. Smoking
Top Manhattan plastic surgeon Dr. Darrick Antell
claims, controversially, that smoking is even more
damaging to the skin than the sun because of its
'total body' effect. Since smoking reduces blood
supply to all your internal organs, as well as your
skin, and impairs your body's ability to heal itself,
he argues that the smoker's lined skin can be seen
as a reflection of internal damage, as well as evidence
of a direct assault on the skin.
Dr. Antell identified smoking as the skin's
biggest enemy after conducting a study of identical
twins. If a twin smoked (and had other skin-damaging
habits, such as sunbathing), he or she looked, on
average, five to seven years older than his or her
non-smoking sibling. And the damage to the skin
seemed to be part of a whole package of accelerated
aging. 'The ones who smoked also had more grey hair,'
says Dr. Antell, ' and were a bit heavier.'
Scientists at The Twin Research Unit at St. Thomas'
Hospital in London have also found that twins who
smoke are more wrinkled, with skin up to 40 percent
thinner, than their non-smoking siblings. It is
known that smoking releases an enzyme that breaks
down collagen and elastic tissue. In addition, it
can damage DNA, which may have a harmful effect
on the skin. Smoking also reduces the amount of
nutrients reaching the skin and impedes the removal
of waste products from it.
Dr. Antell's twins study also suggested
that emotional stress leaves its marks on the skin.
'We had some sets of twins where one (always the
older-looking twin) had had serious personal problems
— the death of a child, for example, or divorce
or stress at work,' he says. 'These problems would
be manifested in deeper crow's-feet and in deeper
lines between the eyebrows.' Stress also creates
a 'fight or flight' response in the body which,
argues Dr. Antell, can starve your skin of
its blood supply. 'If you have more adrenaline in
your system,' he says, 'this will shut down the
capillaries in your skin.' In other words, when
you are stressed, skin quality just isn't a priority
for your body.
Phone: (212) 988-4040
