Smoking causes the skin to age faster, resulting in wrinkles, dryness, and a yellowish cast. It reduces collagen production, oxygen supply, and vitamins A and C, leading to thinner skin and an increased risk of skin cancer. Plastic surgery may not be effective, and healing time is longer for smokers.
If you’ve decided to take up smoking to look more glamorous or older, you might want to rethink that position. The negative effects of smoking on your skin will make you look older, especially if you smoke for an extended period of time. In a few years you will probably look older than your non-smoking peers and the effects will continue to age you and create skin problems.
Smokers who have been smoking for more than ten years may notice what is called the smoker’s face. Several features are common in the smoker’s face, a condition first described in 1985. The skin may take on a red, gray or yellowish cast. Wrinkles around the eyes and mouth become prominent, and the skin may feel dry or flaky. Dry or chapped lips are another effect of smoking on the skin.
Aside from the obvious reasons not to smoke (lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease), there are a few reasons why smoking is cosmetically unsafe. First, smoking reduces the production of collagen, an extremely valuable chemical produced by the body that helps skin look youthful. When the supply of collagen decreases, wrinkles form and the skin loses its elasticity.
The effects of smoking on the skin are evident because smoking reduces the amount of oxygen supplied to the skin. Oxygen is one of the most useful molecules for promoting skin healing. When less oxygen is supplied to the skin, the skin is more likely to become damaged, is easily scarred, and is more vulnerable to other aging factors such as sun damage.
Another of the effects of smoking is the depletion of vitamins A and C. Vitamin A is vital for skin self-repair. Vitamin C is an antioxidant and also helps us absorb iron better. Many smokers show signs of anemia which often manifests as dry, peeling or cracked lips. Smoking can also dehydrate the body, robbing the skin of much-needed moisture.
Smoking can affect the layers of your skin, essentially leading to thinner skin. This can greatly increase the risk of developing skin cancers, most commonly squamous cell carcinoma. While this form of skin cancer doesn’t usually spread to other parts of the body, it can create deep scars when the tumors are removed, as they often sink deep into the skin layers, necessitating the removal of several underlying layers of skin.
If you think you can get rid of the effects of smoking on your skin using plastic surgery, you may be out of luck in this regard. Many plastic surgeons will not perform elective plastic surgery on smokers, because the reduced oxygen supply to the skin can mean more scarring, longer healing times, and a higher incidence of infections. If you continue to smoke, you may not be able to reverse the effects, and if you have surgery while continuing to smoke, your satisfaction with the results may decrease. Also, for any surgery, the healing time is usually nearly doubled if you’re a smoker.
Considering the negative effects of smoking on your skin, you might want to consider before lighting that cigarette how glamorous you’ll be in ten or twenty years time. While the effect on appearance is secondary to the life-threatening aspects of smoking, there’s no doubt that smoking will change your appearance in ways that won’t be considered attractive or valued. Picking up that smoke today to look older could make you look older for life.
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