The beauty side effects of smoking

Smoking thins the skin
'A smoker's skin is normally thinner due to poor circulation, and there are visible signs of premature ageing, with lines and wrinkles more established,' says Laser Aesthetics skin specialist Jane Marsh. In addition, a recent twins study (at St Thomas's hospital) took 25 pairs of identical twins, where one twin was a lifelong smoker and the other had never smoked. Using an ultrasound technique to gauge inner arm skin thickness, some very revealing results surfaced - the smoker's skin was a quarter thinner than that of the non-smoker's, and in a few cases there were differences of up to 40 per cent.

Smoking can alter your body shape
As if maintaining an enviable figure wasn't tough enough already - smoking can create an imbalance in women's hormone levels, which can lead to changes in body shape. You may have heard the saying that smokers tend to be thinner than non-smokers. However, smoking actually affects the endocrinal system - the glands that secrete hormones - and changes body shape, increasing the waist-to-hip ratio. Therefore, despite possibly weighing less, smokers tend to be pot-bellied with spindly legs, probably due to smoking upsetting the hormone levels, thus causing smokers to store the normal amount of fat in an abnormal way, which gives rise to the 'apple' shape.

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