Can drinking straws cause premature wrinkles? A look at TikTok’s claims

Is this the last straw when it comes to protecting your face? If you search for the term “Stanley Cup Gives Wrinkles” on TikTok, you’ll find a number of posts warning you that drinking through straws can cause premature wrinkles around the mouth. But are such claims long or short compared to what is called scientific evidence? After all, getting health advice from social media posts can be like getting life advice from things written on toilet stalls, as I’ve suggested before Forbes Article. Now, this whole straw question raises some complexities because the answer for a particular person depends on a number of things.

In this case, Stanley Cup does not refer to the National Hockey League championship trophy, which most people probably don’t drink from on a regular basis. Instead, it refers to the brand of drinking cups with built-in straws that have become so popular. The claim is that the repeated adorning of the lips and the sucking motions associated with using the straw could cause the resulting wrinkles to form more permanently around the kissing partner.

A search of PubMed for “straws” and “wrinkles” on December 4, 2024 returned only eight studies, none of which were relevant. It appears there are no published, peer-reviewed scientific studies that have compared wrinkling in straw drinkers versus non-straw drinkers. There are also huge differences in how much people suck – that is, they suck on straws. There’s a big difference between regularly using a straw with light suction and constantly drinking from a straw with Hoover’s vacuum-like suction. Therefore, it is important to understand how skin biomechanics work.

Dynamic versus static wrinkles

These straw claims seem to be variations on that whole “don’t show that expression or it’ll stay on your face” warning that you may have gotten from your parents when you were young. There is evidence that certain facial expressions, when repeated over and over, can contribute to wrinkle formation. Just take a look at some of the classic wrinkles that appear over time, such as the wrinkles on the forehead, the so-called frown lines between the eyebrows and the so-called crow’s feet around the corners of the eyes. These are areas in which small muscle contractions with expressions such as smiling, frowning and blinking occur practically every day for years.

If you move your face in any way, there is a chance that your skin will naturally and temporarily wrinkle in different ways in certain areas, assuming you haven’t over-botoxed your entire face. These so-called dynamic wrinkles disappear once you return your face to its original position. Dynamic means changing over time. Static wrinkles, on the other hand, are wrinkles that do not disappear over time after you stop a certain movement. The question is whether various dynamic wrinkles can transform into static wrinkles.

That depends on three things: how often you form these dynamic wrinkles, how long you keep them, and how quickly your skin can return to its original shape. When you’re young, your skin tends to be fairly elastic—that is, it can spring back like a rubber band after being stretched, or like Elastigirl’s arm after she hits someone. This elasticity is due in large part to the network of elastin and collagen protein fibers that run through your dermis, the middle layer of your skin. When you’re younger, your skin is also typically thicker, moister, and oilier, which increases your skin’s elasticity. So if your skin is fairly elastic, regular sucking through a straw is less likely to cause static wrinkles to form. This assumes you don’t suck constantly – meaning you don’t spend many days and nights sucking through a straw.

How your skin changes as you age

However, as you age, your skin cells’ ability to reproduce, produce collagen, retain moisture, and secrete oil slows. As a result, your skin – especially your dermis – becomes thinner. All of this can reduce the elasticity of your skin, which, combined with less support from your dermis and large G-gravity, can cause the surface of the skin on different parts of your face to bulge downward in different ways, resulting in static wrinkles. So this could theoretically increase the likelihood that dynamic wrinkles, if they form repeatedly over time, will turn into static wrinkles.

There are also medical conditions that can make your skin drier, thinner, and less elastic. Such conditions can make it easier to leave false impressions on the skin, so to speak.

How to prevent wrinkles in your skin

There are steps you can take to slow your skin’s loss of elasticity. Of course, you can’t do anything about gravity unless you want to join the billionaires who will one day go to Mars. However, you can do the following:

• Eat well: A good diet can make your skin cells function better.
• Keep your skin well hydrated: Drink plenty of water and moisturize your skin regularly.
• Avoid exposure to ultraviolet rays: UV rays can break down collagen and affect elastin production in your skin. So stop treating your body like a suntanned fried chicken, as I have urged before. If you want to get a tan, consider using a spray tanner, but maybe go a little more sparing on all the orange.
• Avoid exposure to tobacco smoke: How many people have said, “Smoking made my skin so smooth?” Add inhibition of collagen production to the list of harmful effects of tobacco smoke on your body.
• Minimize exposure to air pollutants: Air pollutants such as fine dust and nitrogen dioxide, which can also break down collagen. While not breathing isn’t usually an option for you, there are things you can do to reduce air pollution, such as using air purifiers.
• Be careful with makeup: Before you try to hide your wrinkles with makeup, remember that wearing makeup for too long can clog your pores, which in turn can inhibit collagen production.

Ultimately, life is about moderation and balancing various risks and benefits. Straws can certainly be helpful in many ways. They can help reduce spills and make drinking easier if you have difficulty lifting a cup or opening your mouth. There is no need to treat straws as if they were radioactive. Again, it depends on how you vacuum and what’s going on with your skin. Of course, excessive straw use can theoretically leave lasting marks, depending on the elasticity of your skin. However, for most people, it probably doesn’t make sense to regularly use straws to drink as long as you don’t act as if you’re trying to suck the life force out of the drink.