Effects Of Cigarette Smoking On Skin

Smoking damage your looks. Read on to discover the ways smoking is ruining your appearance.    
    
Bags under your eyes     
If you smoke, you’re four times as likely as nonsmokers to report feeling unrested after a night’s sleep, according to Johns Hopkins study.         
Why the lack of shut-eye? It’s possible that nightly nicotine withdrawal could be causing you to toss and turn. And unfortunately, poor sleep doesn’t equal pretty    
    
Psoriasis     
To be fair, psoriasis is an autoimmune-related skin condition that can show up even if you never touch a cigarette.         
However, if you do smoke, your risk for the scaly skin condition goes up—a lot.     
        
Premature ageing and wrinkles     
We can all appreciate a wizened visage—on our favourite nonagenarian that is. Wrinkles look anything but wise when they show up on a relatively young person who smokes. And they will show up . Experts agree that smoking accelerates ageing, so that smokers look 1.4 years older than nonsmokers, on average.         
Why the wrinkly face? Smoking hampers the blood supply that keeps skin tissue looking supple and healthy.    
    
Yellow fingers     
The nicotine in cigarette smoke can not only make your teeth (and the walls of your home) brown, but it’s also notorious for staining fingers and nails as well.         
Wouldn’t it be easier—and less painful—to just quit?    
    
Thinner hair     
As if the wrinkly skin wasn’t enough, smoking hurts your hair too. Experts think the toxic chemicals in smoke can damage the DNA in hair follicles and generate cell-damaging free radicals as well.         
The end result? Smokers have thinner hair that tends to go grey sooner than nonsmokers. That is, if they have any hair at all.         
Men who smoke are about twice as likely to lose their hair as nonsmokers, after taking into account factors that increase the risk of baldness, such as ageing and genetics.    
    
Scarring     
Nicotine causes vasoconstriction, a narrowing of the blood vessels that can limit oxygen-rich blood flow to the tiny vessels in the face or other parts of the body.     
This means your wounds will take longer to heal and you’ll have scars that are bigger and redder than you would in a nonsmoking parallel universe.    
    
Natural glow is gone     
Ever notice how smokers’ skin sometimes seems off? You’re not alone. Smoker’s Face to describe certain facial characteristics, such as wrinkles, gauntness, and a gray appearance of the skin, caused by smoking.         
Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide, which displaces the oxygen in your skin, and nicotine, which reduces blood flow, leaving skin dry and discoloured. Cigarette smoking also depletes many nutrients, including vitamin C, which helps protect and repair skin damage.    

    
Wound healing     
Several studies have found that smokers do not heal as well after surgeries such as face-lifts, tooth extractions, and periodontal procedures.         
So once cigarettes wrinkle up your face, you’ll have a harder time correcting the damage with cosmetic surgery than people who’ve never smoked.
    
Warts     
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, smokers are more susceptible to infection with human papillomavirus, a large family of viruses that can cause warts—including genital warts.                      
While genital warts are caused by sexually transmitted types of HPV, smoking is also a risk factor. Even taking the number of sex partners into account, women who smoke are nearly four times as likely to have genital warts as nonsmokers, according to one study.    
    
Skin cancer     
Smoking is a leading cause of cancer, including lung, throat, mouth, and oesophageal cancer, so it should be no surprise that cigarettes can also increase your risk of skin cancer.     
Smokers are three times as likely to develop squamous cell carcinoma, the second most common type of skin cancer, than nonsmokers.    
    
Stretch marks     
The nicotine found in cigarettes damages the fibres and connective tissue in your skin, causing it to lose elasticity and strength.         
Stretch marks, red skin striations that can gradually fade to a silvery hue, form when you gain weight rapidly. Anyone can get stretch marks with rapid weight gain (such as in pregnancy), but cigarettes can be a contributing factor.    
    
Flabby tummy     
Cigarettes can be an appetite suppressant, and often smokers have a lower body weight than nonsmokers. However, smokers had more visceral fat than nonsmokers.         
This deep fat pads internal organs and can accumulate in your midsection, ultimately increasing the risk of other diseases, such as diabetes.