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While it is well known that smoking is generally harmful to your overall health, some people still consider the habit cool or sexy. This is certainly the image cigarette companies project to their target customers. But could smokers actually be making themselves look less attractive and desirable? Today let's look at how smoking affects the attractiveness of your largest organ'the skin.

You build the cable of a habit one thread at a time. Every day you make choices that lead to habits. It can be hard to break the cycle of those choices. What starts as a pastime stays on to take its toll on your health.

Can you justify smoking?

Smokers justify their habit with the following reasons:

* Smoking gives them pleasure
* Smoking relieves their depression and makes them feel lighter
* People in their social circle smoke

Most people began as occasional, light smokers. They may have failed to realize that one day, they would become dependant on this "occasional" habit.

The situation is beginning to change. People have begun to think twice before lighting up. This awareness certainly comes from the proven health hazards of smoking.

How smoking affects your skin

You need to be aware of the affects of smoking on your skin and overall looks. This is what smoking does to your skin.

The beauty and youthful look of your skin is largely determined by adequate moisture and oxygen content. Smoking denies an adequate supply of oxygen to your skin and dehydrates it.

* While you are enjoying puffs from your cigarette, you are inviting trouble into your system. Your lungs are the first victims. In just one puff, more than a trillion free radicals are created in your lungs. These free radicals, in turn, induce an inflammatory reaction that gets circulated throughout the whole body.

* Smoking causes the same appearance in your skin as sun damage. The nicotine present in cigarettes is the cause of this effect. It makes you look much older than you are.

* Cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 toxins that enter your bloodstream directly and effect your skin's appearance. The top layers of the skin constrict; this reduces your blood's oxygen content and substitutes it with carbon monoxide. With less oxygen in the blood, toxins and other wastes remain in your system, aging it prematurely. Generally, smoking causes your skin to look pale and grey. In addition, the collagen level of your skin is greatly reduced when you smoke, making your skin more wrinkled and less youthful looking.

* Smoking causes heavy damages to a woman's system by creating an imbalance in her hormone levels and dramatically altering her body shape. This is caused by a disturbance in the endocrinal glands. A research report says that if a woman smokes a pack per day for 40 years, it can accelerate her aging by 7.4 years.

To emphasize the ill effects of smoking on your skin, the term "smoker's face" was added to the medical dictionary. This condition is caused when the skin in your face shows the lines and wrinkles'which make you look older'all due to smoking! The smoker's features are thin and gaunt. There are clear signs of premature aging, induced by poor blood circulation. Evidences show that a smoker's skin is more than 40% thinner than a non-smoker.

When you smoke, you are introducing stimulants into your system that affect your blood vessels.

It has also been suggested that smoking causes certain types of skin cancer. Further research is being undertaken to study the cosmetic effects that smoking has on your skin. For example, smoking dries your skin, especially in the areas affected by the nicotine smoke. Nicotine is also a diuretic and can reduce vitamin A in your body.

If you smoke, I hope I have given you food for thought. By all means, try to stop. Smoking not only ages you through general health deterioration but probably makes you look less attractive. Your family and loved ones need you. So, I caution you to stop right now.

Once you begin to seek treatment to stop, there are also skin solutions that can help you get back to a more vibrant and beautiful you. There is a product we hear that can help you restore your skin to a more youthful glow.

To take extra good care of your skin suffering from the sun-like damage associated with smoking consider using a topical cream like Lumnaderm(tm). This product can offer significant help to those concerned about the appearance of skin which may have been damaged by the sun, free radicals, or other skin problems. Lumnaderm(tm) is available from fine online stores like Amazon and the BODeStore.com (http://www.bodestore.com).