182 replies to this topic

[Skötkonung]

How about guessing this one (that's me, cropped from a larger photo from a party last Christmas):



Since I smoke (non-filtered cigarettes, natural tobacco), guess also the pack-years?

Post a higher resolution photo. I would guess mid to late 30s. Without digressing too much from the original topic, care to share why you think you're immune to the inhaled exogenous AGEs that seem to age every other smoker's skin?

[nightlight]

How about guessing this one (that's me, cropped from a larger photo from a party last Christmas):



Since I smoke (non-filtered cigarettes, natural tobacco), guess also the pack-years?

Post a higher resolution photo. I would guess mid to late 30s. Without digressing too much from the original topic, care to share why you think you're immune to the inhaled exogenous AGEs that seem to age every other smoker's skin?

Sorry, don't have higher res photo file. That one was cropped from a group photo last Christmas emailed to me, so I just had it handy for posting.

Here is my younger (by 4.5 years) brother , health conscious molecular biologist, never smoker:


Here is my HS classmate (a photo from 5 years ago, last time we met), engineer, chess master, never smoker:


It's just horrible what those nasty tobacco smoke AGEs and ROS have done to my skin and hair. So, with these reference points, how many pack years (smoked ~2.5 packs/day since age 20) have the evil TS AGEs & ROS been ravaging me?

Edited by nightlight, 30 June 2011 - 04:41 PM.

[rwac]

It's just horrible what those nasty tobacco smoke AGEs and ROS have done to my skin and hair. So, with these reference points, how many pack years (smoked ~2.5 packs/day since age 20) have the evil TS AGEs & ROS been ravaging me?

I've been meaning to ask you this for a while.
Do you think it's possible that people smoke to raise metabolism to compensate for an underactive thyroid?
Perhaps you could achieve the same effect, but cleaner with thyroid hormones?

Edited by rwac, 30 June 2011 - 05:24 PM.

[nightlight]

It's just horrible what those nasty tobacco smoke AGEs and ROS have done to my skin and hair. So, with these reference points, how many pack years (smoked ~2.5 packs/day since age 20) have the evil TS AGEs & ROS been ravaging me?

I've been meaning to ask you this for a while.
Do you think it's possible that people smoke to raise metabolism to compensate for an underactive thyroid?
Perhaps you could achieve the same effect, but cleaner with thyroid hormones?

Yes, that's certainly an important medicinal effect (check these dramatic boosts of T3 & T4 levels and of the rest metabolism) that could motivate some people to self-medicate in this manner (the effects are immediate and quite noticable). But as our earlier discussions on the subject of medicinal effects of tobacco smoke have shown, this is merely one among many others (only some are due to nicotine), so one can't attribute this particular motivation to all smokers.

For example, for physical laborers or those living or working in toxic/carcinogenic environments, or those sensitive to some toxins at generally tolerable levels, the near doubling of glutathione, catalase and SOD, resulting in near doubling of detox rates & anti-oxidative capacity, is likely the primary attraction to smoking. The potent multi-mechanism anti-inflammatory effects of TS (which go well beyond those of nicotine alone) are likely the reason many with autoimmune conditions or those under pro-inflammatory environmental exposures, or those with chronic inflammations etc, would smoke at higher rates. These two categories of medicinal effects (detox/anti-oxidant & anti-inflammatory) are the chief mechanism (the ignored confounding factor) behind the observed positive statistical correlations between tobacco smoking and 'smoking related diseases'. And so on (check this post).

[Skötkonung]

How about guessing this one (that's me, cropped from a larger photo from a party last Christmas):



Since I smoke (non-filtered cigarettes, natural tobacco), guess also the pack-years?

Post a higher resolution photo. I would guess mid to late 30s. Without digressing too much from the original topic, care to share why you think you're immune to the inhaled exogenous AGEs that seem to age every other smoker's skin?

Sorry, don't have higher res photo file. That one was cropped from a group photo last Christmas emailed to me, so I just had it handy for posting.

Here is my younger (by 4.5 years) brother , health conscious molecular biologist, never smoker:


Here is my HS classmate (a photo from 5 years ago, last time we met), engineer, chess master, never smoker:


It's just horrible what those nasty tobacco smoke AGEs and ROS have done to my skin and hair. So, with these reference points, how many pack years (smoked ~2.5 packs/day since age 20) have the evil TS AGEs & ROS been ravaging me?

Interesting looking at your brother. If he reduced the photo in size / quality, shaved his face, had him lose some weight, and gave him a little more hair you'd probably look the same age.

[nightlight]

Interesting looking at your brother. If he reduced the photo in size / quality, shaved his face, had him lose some weight, and gave him a little more hair you'd probably look the same age.

We don't look anything alike, he took on father's side, I on mother's. I got no hair loss or grays. He's outdoors type and very social, while I practically never go out (work from home, don't drive) and dislike being forced into social events couple times a year. He hates smoking and has never smoked, while I chain smoke. He goes to the docs regularly and listens to their advice, I haven't gone to one in decades and generally do the opposite from the advice and wi$dom of the Sickness Industry. He's morning type, up and going at 5AM, while I get up usually at 12-1 PM, having gone to sleep at 4-5AM.

Classmates at grad school have called me Count Dracula for my reverse sleep pattern. Then, when we met recently, some wondered whether I had 'sold my soul to the devil' and in return got to appear as if frozen in time since then. Last summer, when our Cairn terrier Rambo run away, and my youngest son and daughter came back distraught, unable to find him, I went out to look for him, too. I asked a couple young women and kids standing in a nearby front yard whether they have seen a little yellowish doggy around. Sorry, we didn't see Rambo, a young woman replied, your brother and sister were already looking for him here and in the back yard. You should have seen the look on her face when I explained that I wasn't their older brother Paul but their father (Paul is my oldest son, 18 at the time, who looks like my identical twin, dropped in by a time machine from my HS/college years).

Anyway, my age is the same as the year of my birth modulo 100 (hint #1: 62+ pack years of ravage by ROS & AGEs from non-filtered cigarettes since age 20, hint #2: Teilhard de Chardin and Einstein died ~8 months earlier that year).

[kenj]

Anyway, my age is the same as the year of my birth modulo 100 (hint #1: 62+ pack years of ravage by ROS & AGEs from non-filtered cigarettes since age 20, hint #2: Teilhard de Chardin and Einstein died ~8 months earlier that year).

So, are you 55? I'm thinking you're in your fifties regardless, if you seemingly want to show that smoking (non-filtered) doesn't age you prematurely.
You do look like you're in your upper 40's, FWIW, IMO.
You have been on a low caloric diet for most of your life? Or let me phrase it differently: you have "lived on" coffee and cigs?

[nightlight]

You have been on a low caloric diet for most of your life? Or let me phrase it differently: you have "lived on" coffee and cigs?

Coffee (2 liters/day, with honey and farm milk) plus cigs as stimulants and for life-extension/health reasons (plus few nootropics I've been experimenting with last 5 years). Since I live in US but don't like American cousine (except for steaks, which I eat only during summer when I can barbecue them), I end up skipping most family meals. My wife and kids eat usual American food, although not the worst processed junk but organic/whole foods whenever availavable. Instead, I snack on nuts (mostly walnuts and almonds), fruits, slices of swiss on rye and home made yogurts for much of the day. The main meal (before going to bed) is usually 3 sunny side up eggs with german or hungarian old style dry smoked hams or sausages, with pickles or kraut, and on wekends a bowl of Ben & Jerry icecream for desert. So, it's not quite so low caloric or healthy according to conventional wisdom.

As a kid, with both parents medical doctors, I was overmedicated, sickly child, often had ear, throat and other infections, colds, pneumonias, mild asthma, poor digestion, bad skin (acne, pores) etc. Once I came to US to physics grad school, being fully on my own for the first time, I stopped going to docs or listening to their advice, started chain smoking (I started smoking socially last year of college), eating whatever felt right. My health problems vanished within months and health became non-issue ever since. I still get a touch of mild cold once every several years, for a day or two, plus an occasional minor food poisoning, a little cut or bruise or a bug byte every now and then, and that's about it. With several dental problems I had over years, I would just go to a mall dentist for quick one shot fixes (always without novocain, so I am back to normal as soon as I am out of the chair). Had also to do the full medical for citezenship several years after my arrival, and that was the last time I dealt with quacks altogether. For me, my own cellular biochemical networks are the real docs, the masters of molecular engineering & repair, light years ahead of the pretentious human quackery and pharma fraud. The only problems I would trust the medical industry with would be mechanical/macroscopic kind of problems with self-evident well honed solutions (broken bones, major cuts, acute massive infection, etc, i.e. the stuff that human level computing entitites are meant to process and can do a god job with).

In contrast, my wife and kids, all non-smokers (my wife is even a bit of antismoker, even though she smoked as a physics grad student when I met her), get 1 or 2 colds every year, and they have all the usual American checkups & (mal)treatments for ear & throat infections, allergies, digestive problems, tummy aches, etc. I don't insist that our five kids follow my way (that would be illegal, a child neglect, in the 'land of the free' nanny state, anyway). It's enough that they see an example of each way in front of them, and how each works out over time, and they'll figure it out for themselves eventually (they do ask how come I never get sick, have checkups or why do I smoke, so I do have to explain how the two are related).

[numbered]

my father smoked since he was 13-14. He looked very good , hardly any grey hair or hairloss , hardly any wrinkles at 54 when cancer knocked his door. He fought it and is still alive and he still looks younger than his age after all these treatments etc. Looking younger than your age in a small picture doesn't prove anything about your state of health after 62 pack years. And having a check-up now and then might save your life some day and not the opposite.

[nightlight]

my father smoked since he was 13-14. He looked very good , hardly any grey hair or hairloss , hardly any wrinkles at 54 when cancer knocked his door.

Smoke of a dried tobacco leaf is a potent medicinal smoke and youth elixir, without equal among natural or synthetic substances known to humans. It was used in this role by humans for at least 8000 years, with its beneficial effects honed to perfection via feedback from couple billions life-long test subjects. The plain tobacco leaf smoke not only does not cause cancers or any other "smoking related disease" but it is protective/therapeutic against them or their actual causes. It is precisely these protective/therapeutic effects, which are never accounted for in the (junk, non-randmized) "studies" of the antismoking "science", that are behind the observed statistical correlations between smoking and various diseases. This was all referenced and debated in detail here in this forum in several long, lively threads, the most recent titled "Smoking is good for you". Since it was a very long thread (cluttered with emotional outbursts by some seeking to drown the scientific facts that don't fit their brainwashing), here are the main highlights of the "debate" (no contest actually, it wasn't even close):

1. Dogs exposed to radon or radon+smoke: 5% of smoking dogs and 37% of non-smoking dogs got lung cancers.

2. Massive National Cancer Institute sponsored experiments that backfired terribly, setting back the NCI's workplace smoking bans agenda for more than a decade.

3. The crowning experiments (2004, 2005) of six decades of antismoking "science", the pinnacle -- again backfired badly, as they always do -- at the end,more than twice as many smoking animals alive than non-smoking ones.

4. Self-medication with tobacco

5. Common genes for lung cancer & smoking

(Fisher suspected this to be the case in 1950s; he also suggested self-medication hypothesis, see page 163, where he compares taking cigarettes away from some poor chap to taking the walking stick from a blind man.)


6. Hazards of quitting (triggers lung cancers in animal experiments)

7. Emphysema/COPD - smoking protective rather than cause

8. How does antismoking "science" lie with stats (how to "prove" that -- Prozac causes depression -- using the master method of antismoking "science")

9. Heart attacks from SHS myths (a 'friend saying Boo' is more "hazardous" for your heart than SHS)

10. Glycotoxins/AGE in tobacco smoke -- backfires badly

11. Smoking protects against cancers (reversal of values in cancer state and another common sleight of hand) + smoking vs Caloric Restrictions (and on the fundamental wrong-headedness of CR)

12. More on anti-carcinogenicity of tobacco smoke and how to translate Orwellian antismoking "science" to real science


13. ** why take a chance

14. Smoking and diabetes, insulin sensitivity -- another "proof" backfires
http://www.longecity...153#entry390153

15. How to prove that 'Lifting weights is harmful for muscles' - pinhole vision sleight of hand of antismoking "science" illustrated

16. Oxidative stress, breast cancer, "randomizing non-randomized variables" sleight of hand -- more antismoking junk science claims turned upside-down by facts of hard science


17. Can one replicate the health benefits of tobacco smoke (the short list given) using supplements and pharmaceuticals? Even if it were possible, can one do it for < $1 day (cost for a pack of roll-your-own cigarettes with natural, additive free tobacco)?

18. Who knows more about biochemistry of life and its molecular engineering -- one little cell in your little toe or all the biochemists and molecular biologists in the world taken together? Is "Sickness Industry" good for your health?

He fought it and is still alive and he still looks younger than his age after all these treatments etc. Looking younger than your age in a small picture doesn't prove anything about your state of health after 62 pack years. And having a check-up now and then might save your life some day and not the opposite.

See #18 above. Note that I am not suggesting that mass market junk cigarettes are good for anyone. Those are mostly not even made from tobacco leaf but rather from cheap "tobacco sheets" (reconstituted plant scraps,wood pulp, adhesives, dyes, flavorings, added nicotine,... etc). Filters, lodging their non-biodegradable plastic fibers into smokers lungs, are also harmful. But the classic tobacco smoke, the smoke from the plain dried tobacco leaf, the kind our grandfathers, their fathers,... smoked, all the way back into pre-history, is the most potent youth elixir and medicinal substance you can have, at any price, anywhere.

[Stefanovic]

http://imageshack.us.../263/056pp.jpg/

I'm 29. Most people think I'm younger but I hear numbers in between 19 and 26. Sometimes I think they're lying. What would you guess?

[nightlight]

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/263/056pp.jpg/

I'm 29. Most people think I'm younger but I hear numbers in between 19 and 26. Sometimes I think they're lying. What would you guess?

20-22 would be my guess (you appear a bit depressed/sad on the photo). BTW, you can post images directly via [img] <url> [/img] tag, then it comes out like this:

[Stefanovic]

I'm not depressed at all. but took this picture myself and people usually say that I look angry or depressed in pics I took myself. Not that I have many many wrinkles when I smile :-)

[Stefanovic]

<http://imageshack.us...543/101st.jpg/>

Edited by Stefanovic, 03 July 2011 - 10:40 PM.

[jep]

You definitely look younger in the shot where you're smiling! I'd say very early 20's. In the first one, I think you look late 20's.

[Stefanovic]

Does that imply that happy and smiling people look younger? LOL

[ViolettVol]

How would you guess mine?http://s1192.photobu...334/ViolettVol/

[nupi]

I had seen your other post with your age, but "independent" of that, about 22-24

[Forever21]

How would you guess mine?http://s1192.photobu...334/ViolettVol/

26 youngest, 32 oldest.

[Forever21]

http://imageshack.us.../263/056pp.jpg/

I'm 29. Most people think I'm younger but I hear numbers in between 19 and 26. Sometimes I think they're lying. What would you guess?

21

[Stefanovic]

Thanks forever 21

[Forever21]

%20<http://imageshack.us...43/101st.jpg/>

26

[Forever21]

Thanks forever 21

You're welcome but it wasn't a compliment. Just an honest look at your appearance from a perspective of someone who lives in New York and travels LA, Austin, Vegas, Vancouver, Toronto often.

Good luck.

[Stefanovic]

strange how some people think I look much younger in the non-smiling pic and others think it's the other way around.

[Forever21]

oh that's you too?

the hair man. simple. short hair usually but not always makes you younger.

get cool haircut every time. i find i look younger with shorter hair. matt and others will say longer can make them appear younger.

you seem to sport short hair real well.

[Stefanovic]

yeah it's me too. is there anything else in particular that makes me look younger than I am? my mother is 57 and she looks younger even though she's been smoking since she was 13 and doesnt eat healthy, has been sunbathing a lot and compared to 10-15 yr old younger colleagues she looks younger. , my grandmother is 80 and she looks much younger, Could send some pics but won't post them here.
My father on the other hand looks about his age.

[VidX]

http://imageshack.us.../263/056pp.jpg/

I'm 29. Most people think I'm younger but I hear numbers in between 19 and 26. Sometimes I think they're lying. What would you guess?

Yeah... I'd go with 20-21 at most, from that pic.. Well done sir.

[Forever21]

yeah it's me too. is there anything else in particular that makes me look younger than I am? my mother is 57 and she looks younger even though she's been smoking since she was 13 and doesnt eat healthy, has been sunbathing a lot and compared to 10-15 yr old younger colleagues she looks younger. , my grandmother is 80 and she looks much younger, Could send some pics but won't post them here.
My father on the other hand looks about his age.

CR
sun avoidance
eat less, food is not your friend
kale-spinach
cooked tomato / sauce / paste
garlic
plenty of sleep
water
all vegetables
low sugar fruits
green / white tea
fish oil
almond/walnuts
blueberries
extra virgin olive oil
buy a wide brim hat
buy a huge sunglasses
easy on the protein
go grain-free, plant-based
lycopene
lutein
floraglo
juvess
biosil
gelatin
no sugar, junk/fast food




http://www.longecity...957#entry462957

http://www.longecity...or-skin-health/

http://www.longecity...ounger-by-matt/

http://www.longecity...gen-production/

http://www.longecity...__1#entry188898

http://www.longecity...post__p__462957

http://www.longecity...__1#entry289847

http://www.longecity...__1#entry337668

http://www.longecity...__1#entry206196

Edited by Forever21, 28 August 2011 - 11:15 PM.

[Stefanovic]

Thanks so much. I already take care of myself. The fact that both my mom and her mom look younger and are in a better shape than most people of their age must mean that I have pretty good genes. Their lifestyles are not good.

Apart from this: I'm almost 30 but does the fact that I look younger means that biologically I am younger too? The strange thing is: people of my age think about getting married, having kids and I'm more like: I will all do it someday. constantly have the feeling that people of my age are older.

Something tells me that next year I will start looking old as 29 sounds so much younger than 30.

Last week a 28 yr old person complained about back pains. I said: get well soon and he said: once you'll have my age, you'll feel it too. I said: I'm actually older than you are.

[Forever21]

Don't leave it to guess work. Do CR if you can if you want real younger physiology.