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Two mobile Smokifiers equipped with age-progression technology are visiting community and sporting events, retailers and college campuses throughout more than 25 metro and rural cities across Florida and reaching approximately 3 million people. Cautioning not only on the health risks but also the effects on personal appearance, the Smokifiers are another way that Tobacco Free Florida is spreading the anti-tobacco message and reaching Floridians directly.
The two brightly wrapped blue vans are hitting Florida's roadways and will travel thousands of miles over the next three months educating millions about the harmful effects of tobacco.
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There are two types of effects: Directly, many of the more than 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke are toxic to skin. Indirectly, chronic squinting of the eyes to keep out smoke, and pursing or puckering of the lips while holding a cigarette, both cause facial wrinkles.
Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide and many other oxidants that promote the formation of age-inducing, skin-toxic free-radicals. Nicotine is a stimulant that causes the blood vessels to constrict, reducing the supply of oxygen to the tissues of the skin. Smoking also depletes Vitamin C, which is important for collagen production in the skin. And it induces changes at the cellular level to interfere with the formation of fibroblasts - cells that form connective tissue in the skin.
All these biochemical changes occur as a result of the chemicals in cigarette smoke.
Women who smoke are more likely to have noninflammatory acne, especially blackheads and blocked pores, than nonsmokers are, according to the British Journal of Dermatology.
How much a woman smoked didn't seem to have an effect on the severity of breakouts. But those who had had acne as teens were four times more likely to have "smoker's acne" as an adult.
Any teenager with an inkling of curiosity about what he or she will look like at 50 — both as a smoker and as a nonsmoker — can find out Wednesday.
Age-progression software is just one of the “extras” that will be offered at a Kick Butts Day dodgeball tournament set to take place from 4 to 10 p.m. Wednesday at Civic Arena. The event, which costs $3 per person or $15 per five-person team, is part of the Smokebusters program funded by a Heartland Foundation grant through the St. Joseph-Buchanan County Health Department.
A small, but worrisome number of facelift patients became infected with the antibiotic-resistant staph infection known as MRSA, a new study reports.
About one half of 1 percent of people undergoing facelifts developed the so-called "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection, doctors from Lennox Hill-Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital in New York City reported. . . .
Other risk factors for MRSA infection include having taken antibiotics or having been hospitalized recently, contact with health-care workers, previous MRSA infection, older age, diabetes, smoking and obesity, the study authors said.
"With the rise of MRSA colonization and infections, facial plastic surgeons performing rhytidectomy [facelift] and other soft tissue procedures may want to consider introducing screening protocols to identify patients who are at increased risk for infection," Zoumalan and Rosenberg wrote. "During preoperative evaluation, a full medical history should include information on possible prior contacts with persons at high risk for carrying MRSA."
A BLOOD clot plopping out of a bisected brain. Tar being squeezed from a lung into a surgeon's dish. A foot blackened with gangrene awaiting the amputation saw.
A generation of young Australians have grown up with these images, with anti-smoking ads more graphic than the latest Saw movie.
The shock factor of these campaigns has helped gradually reduce Australia's smoking population. Yet every day someone still buys their first packet of Stuyvos from a 7-Eleven and begins their habit.
Why? Because the anti-smoking campaigns of past and present appeal to the mortality of a demographic which is immortal. . . .
This truth demands a new breed of anti-smoking advertisements whose message concerns not mortality, but vanity. . . .
Packets of cigarettes should bear warnings such as: SMOKING CAUSES WRINKLES; SMOKING STAINS YOUR TEETH; SMOKING TURNS YOUR SKIN GREY.
Finally, imagine what terror a message like: SMOKING AGES YOU PREMATURELY, would strike into the hearts of our youth-obsessed society. . . .
But a parlous complexion or a ruined smile are still much more immediate threats than being in an emphysema ward at the age of 63.
The shots of cancer-devoured organs continue to serve their purpose. The more gimmicky, "I'd prefer mouth cancer to premature blindness" campaign still gets its message across.
But unless Wizened Chic becomes the next big thing in Milan, vanity-based anti-smoking ads can be the extra deterrent the government has been looking for.
Conclusions
The age-specific prevalence of AGA in Taiwan was compatible to that among Korean men but was lower than that among persons of white race/ethnicity. Smoking status, current amount of cigarette smoking, and smoking intensity were statistically significant factors responsible for AGA after controlling for age and family history. Patients with early-onset AGA should receive advice early to prevent more advanced progression.
Smoking may be associated with age-related hair loss among Asian men, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
"Androgenetic alopecia, a hereditary androgen-dependent disorder, is characterized by progressive thinning of the scalp hair defined by various patterns," the authors write as background information in the article. "It is the most common type of hair loss in men." Although risk for the condition is largely genetic, some environmental factors also may play a role.
Smoking may destroy hair follicles, interfere with the way blood and hormones are circulated in the scalp or increase the production of estrogen, said Lin-Hui Su of the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital and Tony Hsiu-Hsi Chen of National Taiwan University in Taipei.
A look at 740 men in Taiwan with an average age of 65 found cigarette use played an important role "in the development of moderate or severe" hair loss, Su and Chin said, in cases where the men smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day. . . .
The study, published in the November issue of the Archives of Dermatology, recommended that men showing early signs of hair loss should be advised about the role smoking can play to prevent further progression.
While Asian men generally have less trouble than Caucasians with the most common form of hereditary male baldness, smoking cigarettes may erase that edge, researchers have said.
A look at 740 men in Taiwan with an average age of 65 found cigarette use played an important role "in the development of moderate or severe" hair loss, Su and Chin said, in cases where the men smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day.
To mark the Smokeout, a traveling photo display is available for viewing today of three Minnesotans who struggled to go smoke-free. Their stories are showcased in this exhibit, which can be seen today at Smiley's Clinic, 2020 E. 28th St., Minneapolis.
Those visiting the exhibit, open from 1:30 to 5 p.m., also can see how their own faces would become wrinkled and discolored if they smoked for years. Age-progression software demonstrations will show the effects of smoking compared to the natural aging process.
The exhibit is underwritten by ClearWay Minnesota, an independent, nonprofit antismoking organization whose funding includes money from the state's 1998 tobacco settlement.
Don't blame breastfeeding for sagging breasts -- a new study has found that feeding does not affect breast shape, but smoking does.
Researchers at the University of Kentucky, led by plastic surgeon Brian Rinker, arrived at this conclusion after a study with patients in Britain. The findings were presented at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons this week.
'A lot of times, if a woman comes in for a breast lift or a breast augmentation, she'll say 'I want to fix what breastfeeding did to my breasts',' Rinker said. . . .
The results showed no difference in the degree of breast ptosis -- the medical term for sagging of the breast -- for those women who breastfed and those who did not.
The team, however, found that several other factors did affect breast sagging, including age, the number of pregnancies, and whether the patient smoked.
'Smoking breaks down a protein in the skin called elastin
Current and past smoking and cumulative measures of smoking were linked to the incidence of psoriasis, according to the results of a prospective analysis reported in the November issue of the American Journal of Medicine. Among former smokers, the risk for incident psoriasis decreased to nearly that of never-smokers 20 years after cessation.
"Smoking may increase the risk of psoriasis, but no prospective data are available on this relation," write Arathi R. Setty, MD, MPH, from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues from the Nurses' Health Study II. "An accurate understanding of the impact of smoking on psoriasis is important from the public health perspective and perhaps for comprehensive management of the condition."
From 1991 to 2005, the investigators prospectively followed 78,532 women from the Nurses' Health Study II to determine the association of smoking status, duration, intensity, cessation, and exposure to secondhand smoke, with the primary outcome of incident, self-reported, physician-diagnosed psoriasis.
It is common knowledge that cigarette smoke contains hundreds of toxins and chemicals and cigarette smoking has been linked to a plethora of diseases and conditions.
The U.S. researchers suggest that heavy smokers have a greater risk of the skin condition and which remains for years after they have quit.
The study of 79,000 nurses by researchers at the Harvard Medical School in Boston and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, found that people with psoriasis who smoked had the more severe disease.
They believe the toxins in cigarette smoke may affect parts of the immune system associated with psoriasis.
Researchers have found that smoking increases the risk of developing psoriasis, heavier smoking increases the risk further, and the risk decreases only slowly after quitting. Investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Harvard School of Public Health, all in Boston, USA, and Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada, have published the results in the November 2007 issue of The American Journal of Medicine. . . .
The study is "Smoking and the Risk of Psoriasis in Women: Nurses' Health Study II" by Arathi R. Setty, MD, MPH, Gary Curhan, MD, ScD, and Hyon K. Choi, MD, DrPH.