What’s good for your lungs may also may have positive effects on your skin. Some dermatologists, for example, said that the nonsmokers among their patients generally had younger-looking skin than smokers, whose skin appeared to have aged prematurely. “You often see more vertical wrinkles above the lip, where smokers pucker, and lines around the eyes because smokers tend to squint to keep the smoke out,” said Dr. Hema A. Sundaram, a dermatologist in Rockville, Md., and Fairfax, Va. “And sometimes smokers have sallower skin.” But the research into such observations is conflicting. One study published in England, based on interviews and physical examinations of elderly patients, suggested that smoking a pack a day over decades was associated with skin changes like wrinkles that added the equivalent of almost a decade of chronological aging to the face. But another study in Finland, in which researchers performed biopsies on the arm skin of volunteers, found no difference in skin elasticity between smokers and nonsmokers. Several other studies have linked smoking to an increased risk of skin cancer. But doctors said it is not clear whether smoking per se may increase the risk of skin cancer or whether smokers tend to sunbathe more than nonsmokers.
