By now, the internal damage caused by smoking is well-known. Heart disease, cancer, an increased risk of stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the list goes on.
Many of these diseases can take time to develop visible symptoms, if they do at all. It is not uncommon for some of the above to herald no warning signs at all. But, along with affecting your insides, smoking can cause lasting damage to your outsides — that is, smoking can physically change your appearance.
Nicotinell, which can help you stop the damage of smoking with help from its nicotine patches, has put together a list of the ways smoking can impact your looks.
Here’s the startling ways in which smoking can warp your appearance.
Hair loss
That’s right; smoking impacts your hair growth.
You might not think of hair damage when it comes to smoking. After all, it’s all going into your lungs, right? Well, your hair comes from follicles under the skin, and these follicles need a few things to produce hair. For one, healthy hair production requires oxygen, which smoking reduces. It also needs vitamins and minerals to build a strong hair strand, which smoking also gets in the way of.
Without a good supply of oxygen and nutrients, your hair follicles won’t produce healthy locks. This means hair thinning and, more shockingly, hair loss.
Unhealthy skin
As mentioned, smoking restricts the level of oxygen and nutrients in your body. This doesn’t just impact your hair, but your skin as well. Without these building blocks, you skin will be prone to aging quickly. A dull complexion and premature wrinkles are all brought on by smoking. In fact, smoking can age your skin prematurely by a whopping 10 to 20 years!
Smoking also causes vasoconstriction: a condition which essentially limits oxygen-enriched blood flowing to the tiny vessel around your face and various other parts of the body. It does this by narrowing blood vessels. If you end up with this condition, cuts and wounds will take longer to heal and cause bigger, redder scarring.
That’s not all. Of the 4,000 chemicals found in cigarettes, many of them actively wreck your skin’s elastin and collagen. These two fibres are crucial in maintaining elasticity, so without them, the skin sags and wrinkles deepen. This is particularly prominent around the inner arms, breasts, and face.
Speaking of the face, smokers often find themselves developing a smoker’s pucker. As smokers use a select group of muscles around their lips over and over again, wrinkles form and deepen quickly.
Eye problems
Linked to the previously discussed skin issues, smoking can accelerate crow’s feet — the wrinkles that develop on the outer corners of your eyes. These crow’s feet will develop quicker, earlier, and deeper if you smoke. Not only because of the previously mentioned elasticity problems smoking causes, but because the smoke and heat from a lit cigarette encourages a smoker to squint to try and protect the eyes. This motion tugs at the skin and causes wrinkles to form.
Bags under the eyes are also a common sight in smokers. A study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine suggests that smokers are four times more likely than non-smokers to feel unrested after a night’s sleep. The study analysed the sleep architecture of 40 non-smokers against 40 smokers, who all took part in home polysomnography. The results also suggested that smokers actually spend less time in a deep sleep state than non-smokers.
Author of the study, Naresh M. Punjabi, MD, PhD, FCCP, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD commented: “It is possible that smoking has time-dependent effects across the sleep period. Smokers commonly experience difficulty falling asleep due to the stimulating effects of nicotine. As night evolves, withdrawal from nicotine may further contribute to sleep disturbance.”
Sources:
https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/why-quit/smoking-health-problems
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20340112,00.html/view-all#scarring–0
http://www.webmd.boots.com/smoking-cessation/ss/slideshow-ways-smoking-affects-looks
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080204172250.htm
http://www.medic8.com/healthguide/smoking/problems-smoking/smoking-your-hair.html
