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Secondhand Smoke and Your Skin
Smoking is second only to the sun in the amount of damage it can do to your skin. The bad news is that the effects of secondhand smoke on your skin are significant — possibly even more than you thought.
Studies have shown that skin that is exposed to cigarette smoke for 15 minutes showed an increase in free radical production over the next 24 hours. That means that even once you’ve escaped from it, smoke continues to wreak havoc. Since it affects the lipid barrier of the skin you can often feel a tightness and dryness to your skin after exposure, but that’s just what you can feel. What’s going on under that is even more insidious.
Besides making your skin feel dry, the effects of smoke can result in blackheads and can increase the inflammatory response in your skin resulting in, among other things, a dramatic decrease in collagen production — this is not a good thing if what you want is youthful, radiant skin!
Obviously, if you smoke, the best thing for your skin and general health is to stop — this is not news. If you don’t smoke and are exposed to secondhand smoke, what’s your best line of defense or, better yet, offense? Antioxidants.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the benefits of taking antioxidants (Vitamins A, C and E are the most common) in the form of supplements. Well, antioxidants applied topically have beneficial effects as well and studies indicate that they can protect your skin to some extent from the damaging effects of free radicals — which are created by exposure to smoke, the sun, stress, etc.
There are a whole host of anti-oxidants that have protective effects against free radical damage — too long a list to list here. Some of the ones that show the best results are tocopherol (vitamin E), coenzyme Q10 and green and white teas. The biggest concern, however, is that antioxidants are highly unstable and are challenging for chemists to stabilize in products. While some products may list the ingredients as being present, and they are being truthful, unless the company has made efforts to protect the efficacy of the ingredients, the activity level of these antioxidants may be low or non-existent. Clearly, this is not the place to buy based on price alone!
The long and the short of it is, when you’re exposed to secondhand smoke, moisturizing alone will not undo the damage (and some ingredients can actually exacerbate the problem). Antioxidant protection is the only way to go and is most effect when applied before exposure to the smoke.
Here’s to a safe and smoke-free holiday!
To set up a skincare consultation with me, please e-mail me at ginger@totalimageconsultants.com. You'll be asked to fill out the skincare profile form skincare profile form before the consultation and to bring your current skin products with you. See more information on the services page of my website here.
Copyright 2004, Total Image Consultants - All rights reserved.
Skincare Fashion Secret 2004 is written and produced by Total Image Consultants. Please direct all questions and comments to
ginger@totalimageconsultants.com. If you would like to forward this newsletter, please do so in its entirety. Do not alter its content or form and please include copyright info. Thank you.
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