A pair of twins, sharing the same family history, almost the same DNA, and even the same face, can still age differently because of their lifestyle habits.
To prove this, researchers conducted an insightful study that revealed how smoking, sun exposure, diet, and marital status could make someone age faster.
For instance, a divorced twin would look about 1.7 years older than a twin who hadn’t, researchers concluded.
A groundbreaking study showed the effects of lifestyle habits like smoking on a person’s facial appearance
Image credits: migrainesurgery
The 2009 study has once again gained widespread attention this week, reminding the world of ways they can avoid the early onset of wrinkles and sagging skin.
Dr. Bahman Guyuron and his fellow researchers studied the faces of 186 pairs of identical twins before coming to their eye-opening conclusions.
“We wanted to look at the factors that may accelerate aging,” said co-author Dr. Guyuron. “What are the things we can control? By changing your behaviors, can you control part of aging that would otherwise be speeded up?”
The photographs of the twins were taken during the Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, in 2009, and they were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their lifestyle choices and medical history.
Since twins would generally have similar genetic material, the differences in how old they look would be attributed to their environmental factors as well as lifestyle choices.
In the case of twins Dina and Gina, researchers found that the then-27-year-olds looked noticeably different.
“The added weight on Gina takes away definition in her jawline and projection in her cheekbones,” Dr. Bahman Guyuron previously told NBC News.
Dina’s face was deemed to be younger looking, while Gina, who weighed 50 lbs more than her sister, had an older, rounder, and less defined face.
Researchers compared photographs of identical twins and concluded whose face aged faster
“Excessive loss of weight can be detrimental to youthfulness and attractiveness,” Dr. Guyuron told the New York Times. “It’s a warning if you lose too much weight after the age of 40.”
If the twins were over the age of 40, a plumper face made a twin look younger when compared to a slimmer face.
Smoking was determined to be another factor that massively impacted the aging of one’s face.
The researchers concluded that 10 years of smoking added about 2.5 additional years of aging to a twin’s face when compared to a twin who didn’t smoke.
After the age of 40, a plumper face made a twin look younger when compared to a slimmer face
This effect was visible in identical twins Brenda and Barb, who were 52 at the time of the study.
“I love being called the younger one,” Barb laughed and said at the time.
Brenda appeared 6.25 years older than her twin sister due to habits like smoking half a pack a day for 14 years, exposing herself to the sun for 14 hours a week, and having a lower body mass index.
“The festoons of loose skin under Brenda’s eyes are attributable to her cigarette habit,” Dr. Bahman Guyuron said.
“When I see that [on patients], I don’t have to ask if they smoke. I know they do,” added the Ohio-based plastic surgeon.
10 years of smoking added about 2.5 additional years of aging to a twin’s face
Smokers also tend to have more sagging skin, more bags of the lower eyelids, more wrinkles, and sagging jowls. Dr. Guyuron explained that this could be because smoking reduces oxygen to the skin, which consequently decreases blood circulation. This leads to one’s skin looking more aged, wrinkled, and weathered.
“It is noteworthy that even among sets of twins where both are smokers, a difference in five years or more of smoking duration can cause visibly identifiable changes in facial aging,” Dr Guyuron said.
The trifecta of smoking, sun exposure, and a lesser weight also made twin Susan appear 11 and a quarter years older than her sister Jeanne.
Twins who were more exposed to the sun also appeared to have an older-looking face than their siblings
Susan had smoked for 16 years, used to sunbathe, and also weighed 15 lbs less than Jeanne, leading to patchy discoloration, age spots, and reduced skin elasticity in Susan’s face.
In the case of Janet and Jean, who were aged 54 when the study was conducted, the latter sister looked older with deeper smile lines, a darker under-eye area, and “more numerous and deeper vertical frown lines,” Dr. Guyuron said.
The surgeon, who was ranked in the top ten of Newsweek’s Best Plastic Surgeons in America, said Jean’s older-looking face could be because of her divorce after 27 years of marriage, while Janet had been married for over three decades at the time of the study.
Researchers concluded that even a divorce could lead to stress, which leads to the face aging faster
The co-author of the paper noted that marital woes and even worries about finances and finding love after separation can lead to stress, which in turn affects one’s appearance.
Due to the effects of stress, researchers concluded that divorced twins, on average, appeared at least two years older than their married or single sibling.
“You can see a huge difference,” one netizen noted
