Skin wrinkles can have various causes, ranging in severity from 'minor' to 'life-threatening'. Finding the true cause means ruling out or confirming each possibility – in other words, diagnosis.
Diagnosis is usually a complex process due to the sheer number of possible causes and related symptoms. In order to diagnose skin wrinkles, we could:
Cause | Probability | Status |
---|---|---|
Premature Aging | 90% | Confirm |
Cigarette Smoke Damage | 52% | Possible |
Compared to other people of your age, how wrinkled is your skin?
Possible responses:
→ About average / don't know→ I have fewer wrinkles than most → I probably have more wrinkles than average → I definitely have more wrinkles than others my age |
As with skin that is overexposed to sunlight, smoking causes thickening and fragmentation of elastin, the elastic fibers that are long and smooth in healthy skin. Smoking also depletes the skin's oxygen supply by reducing circulation. It decreases the formation of collagen, the skin's main structural component, and may reduce the water content of the skin, all of which increase wrinkling. Sometimes it is easy to spot someone with 'smoker's face'.
Our outward appearance says a lot about what is going on inside our body: If a person appears to be aging prematurely then it is probably not just occurring on the outside.