Bad Habits That Can Age Your Face

Hard living can lead to hard looks, according to new research. Are you at risk?

THE OLDER WE GET, the more we obsess over looking younger. Genes are the main indicator of how well (or poorly) you’ll age, but if you tend to indulge in two less-than-healthy habits – heavy drinking and smoking – your face will age much faster, according to a study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

Danish researchers tapped data from the Copenhagen City Heart Study to track visible signs of ageing in 11,500 adults for 11.5 years. Study participants were queried about how much they drank and smoked as part of a general review of their lifestyle habits. Researchers also examined their ears, eyes and hairlines.

The results revealed that, yes, hard living equals fast ageing. Women who downed 28 or more drinks a week were 33 per cent more likely to develop discolouration in the eyes linked to ageing, compared to women who had fewer than seven drinks a week. For men, the risk jumped to 35 per cent when they had 35 or more drinks a week. Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for more than 15 years raised the odds that a woman’s eyes would betray signs of ageing by 41 per cent, compared to a non-smoker; the risk was 12 per cent for male smokers.

“This is the first prospective study to show that alcohol and smoking are associated with the development of visible age-related signs and thus generally looking older than one’s actual age,” the researchers told Science Daily. “This may reflect that heavy drinking and smoking increases general ageing of the body.”

Light to moderate drinkers didn’t have any greater visible ageing signs than non-drinkers, so drinking in moderation gets a pass.