Smoking and Its Effects on the Skin
Smoking causes a lot of harm to the skin apart from causing life threatening effects on other organs of the body. Both active and passive, long term smoking can affect the health adversely. So before you lift that stick to your lips, beware you may be endangering the lives of your family and friends, apart from your own life.
Smoking leads to the development of free radicals which cause the damage and also cause release of toxic gases like carbon monoxide, ammonia, pyridine, butane, nicotine, aldehyde and other toxic materials. All these gases cause vasoconstriction on long term basis thus causing typical “smoker’s face” appearance.
Chronic smokers also age faster when compared to non smokers.
Smoking reduces the oxygen supply to the skin and hence the skin looks dull, lusterless. The skin gets thinner, collagen is lost early and soon leading to the development of premature lines and wrinkles. The skin tends to get dry and patchy feel. Nicotine in the smoke does not allow the body to utilize vitamins, esp., Vitamins a and C, leading to dry, wrinkled appearance of the skin.
Constant use of cigarettes causes darkening of the lips and dry and patchy appearance of the lips. with chronic smoking the lips may also be thinned out with increase in fine lines and wrinkles around the mouth. Chronic smokers also tend to have dark circles, hollowness around the eyes. it can also alter the shape of the body in females leading to deposition of abnormal amount of fat, due to hormonal changes induced by chronic smoking.
Lastly, rather than treating your prematurely aged skin, it is better to quit smoking.