By: Jennifer Dawson
When you smoke a single cigarette, you are introducing a mixture of over 4,000 chemicals to your body, which includes ones that damage your skin. More than just increasing your risk for heart diseases and lung cancer, smoking also negatively affects your skin. With each puff, smoking causes your skin to age prematurely. You either use all-natural skin care products or quit smoking to reverse your skin’s premature aging.
Premature Wrinkles
If you smoke, you are three times more likely to develop wrinkles on your face. Smokers might also looked older because they have more wrinkles compared to nonsmokers. Collagen keeps the skin elastic. Smoking causes a reduction of collagen levels on our skin, which is why it’s easier for wrinkles to form. Even though collagen levels drop as we age, smoking speeds up this process and produces wrinkles. You might develop wrinkles around your eyes and mouth, which are also called smoker’s lines due to movements associated with smoking.
Dry and Dull Skin Complexion
An unhealthy skin complexion is a giveaway that a person is a smoker. Nicotine causes the blood vessels to become narrow that reduces blood flow to skin cells and deprive them of both oxygen and nutrients. Vitamin A, which is one of the glow-inducing nutrients because it helps new skin growth, is lessened due to smoking. This results to dry and dull skin. In addition, lighting up also reduces the moisture of your skin because of the destruction of hyaluronic acid, which is a substance that helps skin to retain moisture.
More Oiliness and Breakouts
You are also more likely to develop adult acne due to smoking. From 1046 randomly selected women, researchers found that adult acne was more frequent among smokers compared to non-smokers. Nicotine and other harmful toxins in cigarettes causes an increase of production of oil resulting to oiliness and breakouts.
Slow wound healing
Smoking delays the healing of the wounds, including injuries to the skin and wounds from surgey. Vascular constriction of blood vessels, caused by the toxins in the cigarettes, tends to prevent healing of the wounds. As blood vessel’s size are narrower, there is less oxygen delivered to the skin. Most doctors would recommend that patients stop smoking before surgery due to its impact to healing. Smoking also affects your insurance during surgeries. In the long run, it will be better to quit smoking so that you will have lower insurance premiums.
Skin Staining
The skin tone of smokers lean toward orange or grey tones. The lack of oxygen to skin cells caused by smoking plays a part in this occurrence. Holding cigarettes also leads to yellowing of the skin due to tar found in cigarettes. It will be difficult to remove this skin stain with soap and water.
You might not notice these effects but the longer your smoke, the greater the impact to your skin. The best way to avoid these harmful effects is to not smoke to begin with. If you are a smoker, you have to quit now as the effects are reversible. A few weeks of quitting, your blood circulation improves meaning more oxygen and antioxidants for your skin. Say goodbye to a sinful habit and hello to a better skin!
