How Smoking Affects Your Skin

Cigarette smoke constricts blood flow to your skin. Like, really! Not only are you damaging your own source of breathing but you’re also ”damaging your skin’s ability to breathe”, says Hooman Khorasani, Chief of Dermatologic and Cosmetic Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. You’re basically suffocating your skin, depriving it of oxygen and therefore reducing blood flow causing both short and long-term impacts. When you smoke, your skin is much slower at healing acne scars, wrinkles are much more likely and most importantly, and you are at risk for skin cancer! Literally every single cigarette affects you negatively, every-single-one!

Not only are you depriving your skin of oxygen and blood flow, but also of nutrients! Tobacco smoke has thousands of chemicals that in addition to the lack of oxygen and nutrients, causes the destruction of collagen and elastin. For those of us who aren’t dermatologists, collagen and elastin are proteins that give your skin its strength and elasticity. This destruction of collagen and elastin leads to saggy skin, lax blood vessels and uneven skin coloring. No thank you!!!!

Smoking makes you even more likely to get skin cancer because the effects of UV sunlight are amplified in the presence of smoking! Not only are you at risk for skin cancer but also lung cancer and let’s be real… that’s enough to completely quit the awful smoking habit.

Smoking suffocates your skin, leaves you with a worse-off complexion, increases wrinkles and their definition, slows down acne healing and puts you at risk for skin/lung cancer! Pull the cord! Pump the brakes! It’s time to put an end to smoking for your overall health (and for those around you).

It might take time for your skin and health to improve after quitting but it WILL happen! You just need to take that first step and quit.

We wish you the best of luck and support!