Smoking: Bad For Your Skin Too

Scientists have recently used pairs of twins to demonstrate the effects of smoking on the skin. One twin looks significantly older than the other. The apparently older twin is a chronic smoker. Cigarettes are widely regarded as bad for your heart and lungs, but the skin shows key damage as well, from wrinkles to yellowing. As the largest organ in your body, the skin shows tobacco and toxin stress in people as young as 20 years old, states Discovery Channel.

Blood Vessels And Wrinkles

Tiny blood vessels that supply oxygen and vitamin A to your skin slowly narrow over time, especially in chronic smokers. Nicotine is to blame for this narrowing effect. As a result, the skin along your face, neck and inner arms begins to wrinkle. As a living organ, skin needs oxygen and elemental nutrients to remain healthy as it grows and heals itself over a person’s lifetime. Some wrinkles can be reversed by quitting the smoking habit, but most skin damage is permanent when the smoking is long term.

Physical Skin Stress

Chronic smokers pucker their lips and squint their eyes during smoking. This physical stress, over time, causes wrinkles and crow’s feet. Repetitive motions cause the skin to remain stuck in that position over time. When coupled with poor oxygen and vitamin A levels, the skin has no way to rejuvenate and resist the physical stress.

Heat

Your skin is not meant to have heat near it on a constant basis. Lighting up a cigarette and puffing on it allows heat to damage your facial skin on a daily basis. Wrinkles, yellowing and patchy coloring appear over time.

Fibrous Skin Cells

Your skin has elasticity to move easily along joints for everyday flexibility. With over 4,000 chemicals in a single cigarette, the elastin and collagen in your skin begins to lose elasticity. When these fibers are damaged, your skin cannot stretch and return to a normal shape. As a result, skin sags and wrinkles because it cannot flex normally.

As science constantly explores and discovers new information about smoking, the truth behind a smoker’s rapidly aging skin becomes apparent. Cigarette chemicals negatively affect many parts of the body.

Unhappy with your skin? Contact Specialists in Dermatology in Tucson for skincare solutions today.