Smoking and Skin Damage

Yes that's right, smoking can make you ugly in a lot of ways. For starters you'll get wrinkles and your skin will become floppy and gross at an early age.

There are three main components that your body produces to keep your skin looking smooth called elastin, collagen, and microfibrillar----I bet you can’t say that five times fast. When you smoke cigarettes it slows down the production of these two structural ingredients. When that happens, your skin loses elasticity and firmness.

So what? Well here’s an illustration for all you hands-on learners out there. With your right hand pinch a fold of skin in area between your thumb and forefinger on your opposite hand. See how it’s raised now that you’re pinching it? Now let it go. Lucky for you it probably snapped right back down like a rubber band. That’s elasticity.

Now imagine that after you pinched it your skin did not snap back in to place and that absurd raised fold of flesh is still there. That’s what smoking does to your skin.

Microfibrillar is the stuff that works with elastin to keep your skin looking firm. Without it your skin would look like a bag of wet clothes. When you smoke your body makes less and less of it over time. Have fun finding a date looking like a lump of dirty laundry.

Here is a video about how badly smoking can turn your face into an ugly deranged turnip and the type of hell you'd need to go through to fix it.

Information Source:

(Jan. 2007). Just M., Ribera M., Monsó E., Lorenzo J.C., Ferrándiz C. Effect of Smoking

on Skin Elastic Fibres: Morphometric and Immunohistochemical analysis. National Center for Biotechnology Information Dermatology Department. Retrieved July 11, 2012 from <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17199572>.

Mouthful of Garbage

As you probably guessed, smoking isn't doing your mouth any favors either. The mouth is the point of entry for the smoke after all, so it has the misfortune of taking front-line level damage.

First of all the tobacco will yellow your teeth. The stain is deep because the tobacco seeps into the enamel so good luck ever brushing it out.

In addition your gums will become swollen and red from the cells constantly needing to replace themselves after being murdered by the 4,000+ poisons you're inhaling. They'll end up looking something like this:

Now pucker up cause we're just getting started. With all the cells being damaged and killed in the mouth, your body will find itself less able to resist bacterial decay. Indeed cigarettes pile plague and tartar on top of whatever you normally accrue in a day and let's face it: if you smoke you probably don't eat healthy either. So consider this a multiplicative effect.

Oooh oooh! I haven't even gotten to the best part: Meet your new best friend Leukoplakia,

Isn't he cute? I bet you can't wait to swap spit with someone who has a tongue that looks like this. You may be asking yourself: what in all the world is wrong with this poor idiot? Well gross mustache aside, he's a smoker. Smoking can cause leukoplakia. What's worse is that you'll notice his teeth don't look too shabby. That's because leukoplakia can potentially occur long before your teeth start rotting out. Probably not something you wanna show people on your okcupid account.

Information Source:

(17 July 2012). WebMD. Smoking and Oral Health. Retrieved July 13, 2012 from

<http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/guide/smoking-oral-health>. 

Smoking and Love Life Do Not Mix

Thought your romantic life was already doomed after reading my other two posts eh? Couldn't possibly get any worse? Well it can.

Smoking greatly hinders the body's ability to send blood and oxygen where it is needed. Ever seen a smoker beat someone in a footrace that was longer than 300 feet? No, you haven't. That's because the lungs get damaged and your blood vessels get clogged up from the cigarettes.

You DO need some semblance of cardiovascular durance to perform sexually, especially if you're into the wilder side of sex----I'll let you decide what constitutes the "wilder side".

The male sex organ is solely dependent on a steady flow of blood to remain erect. If that flow is impeded or slowed periodically you will experience sexual dysfunction. This will embarrass you and frustrate your partners.

So gents, let's put down the cigarettes and step onto the treadmill. Exercise is more effective at relieving stress anyway, psychologically and physiologically.

Information Source:

(15 Apr. 2006). Chapman, S. Erectile Dysfunction and Smoking: Subverting Tobacco

Industry Images of Masculine Potency. National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine. (10.1136/tc.2006.016063). Retrieved July 17, 2012 from <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563575/>.

Breaking the Bank on Cigarettes

If you're a smoker it's no surprise to you that it's expensive hobby. Did you know it could end up costing you $15,000 extra each year? 


Let's start with the smaller numbers first and work our way up. If you're a pack-a-day smoker you're probably dropping between $30 - $40 a week on cigarettes. If you're not a pack-a-day smoker yet you will be one day unless you quit so read on.

There are roughly 52 weeks in a year, so cigarettes can end up costing you an extra $2,080 per year. Even if you're spending within the minimum range of $30 per week that still adds up to $1,560 annually. For that much money you could make a down payment on a handsome car or pay off a sweet motorcycle. But instead you decided to guzzle poison. Bravo.


This estimated annual expense does not include additional side-effect costs from smoking cigarettes. You'll have higher dental costs, burnt or stained clothes that you must pay to replace, a loss of productivity from fatigue and insomnia, and other costs brought on by chronic and acute conditions your cigarettes gave you. In total, this could end up burning an extra $15,000 annually FROM YOUR WALLET.


If you want to get a better idea of exactly how much cigarettes are costing you, here is a link to Cancer.org's  Handy dandy smoking cost calculator:

http://www.cancer.org/Healthy/toolsandcalculators/calculators/app/smoking-cost-calculator.aspx

Check it out, it's very simple to use.

Oh, and just in case you are not yet convinced of how thoroughly smoking will wreck your @$$, here is a scary video to cement the idea in your smoke-veiled head:

Sources:

(12 April 2002) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Annual Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Economic Costs --- United States, 1995--1999. Retrieved July 11, 2012 from <http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5114a2.htm>.

Program Proposal

I have devised a program proposal aimed at smoking cessation among college freshmen.

The program will consist of 20 one hour sessions that meet 2 times each month for ten months. At the first session participants will be aided in designing their individualized smoking cessation plan. Sessions will include multimedia, guest speakers, story-telling, story-sharing, instruction in cessation strategies, and regular updates and evaluations of their individualized cessation plans.

Participants will randomly paired into two-person teams for the competition aspect; this will facilitate encouragement between team members. Self reports will taken at random intervals during the intervention as well as carbon monoxide level breath tests to determine abstinence. Participants will be made aware that they receive a score at each evaluation and at the second session of every second month a prize will be awarded to the teams within the top three score. A grand prize will be awarded at the final month to the team that ranks in first place. More points will be issued to those with greater success at smoking abstinence. Points will be lost if a self report conflicts with the carbon monoxide test. Points will be gained if the self report agrees with the carbon monoxide test. This will encourage honesty in self reports.

Participants will be randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. Controls will be given a two sessions each month with no competitions or prizes. All prizes will be held until the end of the intervention to encourage commitment to entire program.

Afterwards, statistical analyses will be conducted to determine if any statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) exists between experimental and control group post-intervention results.