How Smoking Affects the Skin




smoker face Do you know that an “experienced” smoker can be easily identified by her facial features? The term “smoker’s face” was added to the medical vocabulary in 1985, when the British Medical Journal reported on the results of the study conducted by Dr. D. Model to find out how smokers’ skin was damaged by their unhealthy habit.

According to the study, most heavy smokers looked older than their real age, and were characterized by the following facial features:

•    deep wrinkles and lines radiating from the corners of the lips and eyes, and shallow wrinkles on the jaw and cheeks;
•    visibly protruding facial bones, and cheeks “sinking”;
•    noticeably “atherosclerotic” blood vessels;
•    worn out and rugged facial skin; and
•    greyish, cyanotic, purple, or reddish complexion, also observed in alcoholic patients;

Many of the above skin changes indicate a toxic process within the body, which is reflected in the quality, appearance, and colour of the facial skin. No wonder, as one cigarette contains over 4000 harmful chemicals, many of which travel directly into your blood and are delivered into the skin cells. In addition, smoking hampers the process of spontaneous skin regeneration, because it narrows, or, in medical terms, “constricts”, the skin vessels, therefore reducing the supply of the blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the skin structures. Another damaging effect of blood vessels’ constriction is a reduced efficiency of the skin’s self-cleaning - metabolic waste is not removed fast enough. As a result, skin proteins, including a very important type called “collagen”, are getting damaged, and the skin can develop different lesions, pimples, and areas of discoloration. All this combined creates a perfect environment for the development of an unhealthy-looking “smoker’s face”.

Smoking only a single cigarette makes skin vessels remain constricted for as long as 1,5 hours. This results in a 24% reduced blood flow to the extremities (limbs, toes, and fingers). Another cigarette will add additional 5% to the reduction in the blood supply. According to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, an average smoker who consumes about a pack of cigarettes a day, remains in a chronic hypoxic state (meaning that his tissues do not receive enough oxygen and nutrients due to vasoconstriction and a reduced blood supply) for most of the time.

Another study, which was recently conducted in Great Britain at the St. Thomas’s Hospital, confirmed the fact that smoking could make the skin grow thinner. The study measured the degree of thickness of the inner arm skin of a group of identical twins, where one twin smoked and another was a non-smoker. The results showed that that smokers’ skin was 25% to 40% thinner that that of non-smokers.

However, good news is that stopping smoking gradually restores the health of the skin and can remove a “smoker’s mask” from your face just within a few years.

Deanna Campbell

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Posted on October 12, 2007 
Filed Under Smoking and Health

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