We all know smoking is bad for you in so many ways. Nicotine is absorbed by every cell of the body. It causes multi-organ damage such as heart disease, brain damage, and many lung diseases. If cancer
doesn’t get you, the smoke attacks the small air cells in the lungs, turning them into liquid rot or useless scar tissue. And … when you can’t breathe well, that hurries the journey through life often by decades. On a positive note, smoking has dropped significantly in the last ten years to 15% of the population in Canada with only 11% smoking daily.
Effects of smoke in the skin, hair, and nails are less dramatic but more visual.
Smoking Consequences:
- Staining and odour on hands and nails, leading to prominent yellow-brown discolouration.
- Smokers smell – Smokers lose their sense of smell and they become insensitive to the malodour’ emitted from skin and hair. No cologne hides that smell.
- Smoker’s face- it is well known for decades that smoking increases aging in the skin. A smoker’s complexion takes on a yellow tinge, emits no healthy glow, and exhibits increased wrinkling particularly in the sides along the mouth and lip margins and around the eyes.Nicotine causes damage to the small blood vessel walls, thereby reducing nourishment to tissues and destroying the structural components of the collagen and elastic fibres. Free radicals in the smoke accelerates skin breakdown and impairs skin cell replacement. There is no win-win situation here. The vessel damage is visible as convoluted dilated red lines on the face. A closer look will show this occurring everywhere on the body as the skin is ruined.
- Skin Cancers – Smokers get more cancers. It is believed that more than 5,000 chemicals in
cigarettes, many carcinogenic, mutate the DNA in cells. - Poor Healing – Smoked up skin has many strikes against it in the process of repairing itself.
- Increased Hair Loss – A poorly nourished scalp means undernourished hair follicles, leading to
increased loss of active hairs and diminished hair growth.
Some Good News – But Only For Quitters:
Some of the direct effects of smoke on skin, hair, and nails will improve as Nicotine is washed from cells and vessels start repairing and re-nourishing skin cells. Here are a few specific treatments to reverse and repair damage that offer the best hope for improvement:
- Medical grade skincare
- Chemical Peels
- IPL treatments to photo rejuvenate skin
- Fractional lasers to stimulate tissue rebuilding
The only safe cigarette is an unlit cigarette. Laser and Skin Care Medspa can help recover the vitality and reverse the aging of the skin. Dr. Bakken can provide the necessary medical aids and prescriptions to assist in that positive life changing step to becoming an EX-SMOKER.