Several studies have found that smoking is an independent risk factor for premature facial wrinkling and facial ageing, and the more a person smokes, the greater the risk. Skin damaged by tobacco smoke typically has a greyish, wasted appearance.
Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide, which displaces the oxygen in your skin, and nicotine, which reduces blood flow, leaving skin dry and discolored. Cigarette smoking also depletes many nutrients, including vitamin C, which helps protect and repair skin damage.
The skin can absorb nicotine from cigarettes. This may cause adverse effects such as premature skin aging, delayed wound healing, and increased infections. It may also lead to skin diseases like psoriasis, acne, eczema, and skin cancer.
Smoking deprives your skin of oxygen, and over time this can change your complexion and cause uneven coloring, Health reported. In addition, smoking can damage the collagen in your skin.
Smoking leads to increased production of an enzyme that breaks down collagen, so it reduces your skin's elasticity and makes it look more aged, sagging and wrinkled. Smokers have characteristic patterns of wrinkling of the skin, including lines around the mouth and “crow's feet” around the eyes.
Smoking also reduces the amount of blood flowing to the skin by constricting blood vessels near the skin's surface, depleting the skin of oxygen and essential nutrients transported in blood. Together, these changes add up to what some doctors describe clinically as a “smoker's face.”
Early Aging and Premature Wrinkles
The toxins in cigarette smoke damage collagen and elastin, which are the fibrous components of your skin that keep it firm and supple. 1 Without them, your skin can become hardened and less elastic, leading to deeper wrinkles and premature aging.
Reduced Discolouration and Staining. Increased blood flow will also make your complexion look less grey and pale, one of the most noticeable differences in your skin before and after quitting smoking. As your skin gets more nutrients and oxygen, your face may even appear brighter with a healthy glow, after you quit.
Quitting smoking can improve your appearance. As blood flow gets better, your skin receives more oxygen and nutrients. This can help you develop a healthier complexion. If you stay tobacco-free, the stains on your fingers and nails will disappear.
One of the most visible effects of smoking are the wrinkles and lines that start to show up on the face. Smokers crinkle their eyes to protect them from the smoke, which causes crow's feet. While most people get crow's feet after a certain age, they appear earlier for smokers.
"Aside from early wrinkling, other facial features have been described in smokers. These include atrophy (or thinning) of the skin, plethora (facial redness), and prominence of the underlying bony contours of the face," she adds.
Also, if you started smoking at a young age, you will be at higher risk later in life. In general, lung cancer rates begin increasing around age 40 and peak after age 70. With all of that said, there is no such thing as a safe amount of smoking or a “safer” cigarette.
Smoking causes changes in the eyes that can lead to vision loss. If you smoke: You are twice as likely to develop AMD compared with a people who do not smoke. You are two to three times more likely to develop cataracts compared with a people who do not smoke.
1 Month After Quitting: Circulation tends to recover restoring nutrients and oxygen into the skin. Often this helps boost skin cell turnover and provides a healthy glow to the skin. 6 Months After Quitting: Maybe people can begin to see a reduction in fine lines, wrinkles, and dark spots/pigmentation.
Three days after you stop smoking, your body naturally reduces nicotine levels. Knowing this is essential because this is the point when many people experience their first symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. The most common ones include headaches, irritability, and mood swings as your body learns to live without nicotine.
Week 3 After Quitting Smoking
At three weeks, you've likely gotten through the shock of physical withdrawal. Now you're beginning to tackle the mental side of nicotine addiction, or psychological withdrawal. 2 This turn of events often triggers cravings to smoke that can feel like you're back at square one.
3 months. At the three-month point, plenty is happening in your body. Your lungs' natural cleaning system (involving little hair-like cells called cilia) is recovering and getting better at removing mucus, tar and dust from your lungs. This means coughing should improve and you are likely to be wheezing less.
Smoking reduces oxygen to the skin, which also decreases blood circulation, and that can result in weathered, wrinkled, older-looking skin, explains Dr. Bahman Guyuron, a plastic surgeon in Cleveland, Ohio, and the lead author of the study.
If you are a smoker, please understand that you can potentially reverse years of damage caused by smoking if you stop today. The FDA and CDA say that within 12 hours after your last cigarette, the carbon monoxide level in your blood returns to a normal level and increases oxygen-blood flow.
Your skin recovers its elasticity when you stop smoking. It will also be smoother, making it more pleasant to look at and touch. Your skin complexion will become visibly brighter in the first few weeks after you stop smoking. After six months, your skin will regain its original vitality.
Background: Heavy smokers (those who smoke greater than or equal to 25 or more cigarettes a day) are a subgroup who place themselves and others at risk for harmful health consequences and also are those least likely to achieve cessation.
Every day smoker: An adult who has smoked at least 100 cigarettes in his or her lifetime, and who now smokes every day. Previously called a “regular smoker”.
Studies reveal that smokers tend to be more extroverted, anxious, tense, and impulsive, and show more traits of neuroticism and psychoticism than do ex-smokers or nonsmokers. The literature also reveals a strong association between smoking and mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and depression.