The effects of smoking on skin aging have been recognized for years. A 1965 study first identified what came to be known as “smoker’s face”- gray, pale and wrinkled skin. Are you trying to quit but craving a smoke? Nicholas Perricone investigates
Are you trying to quit
but craving a smoke?
Here’s what to do
Nicotine and your
body and mind
As a smoker, you are used to having a certain level of nicotine in your body. You control that level of nicotine in your body. You control that level by how much you smoke, how deeply you inhale the smoke, and the kind of tobacco you use. When you quit, cravings develop when the body wants more nicotine.
When you are exposed to smoking triggers or even when you use a small amount of nicotine, your mood changes, and cravings for tobacco can go up as well as your heart rate and blood pressure. Cravings are not “just in your head.”
What to expect
• Cravings usually begin within an hour or two after you stop smoking, peak for several days, and may last several weeks
• The urge to smoke will come and go. Your cravings will be strongest in the first week after you quit using tobacco. Cravings usually last only a very brief period of time
• You may also experience cravings that follow each other in rapid succession. As the the days pass, the cravings will get further apart. There is some evidence that mild occasional cravings may last for six months
What to do
• Remind yourself that cravings will pass
• As a substitute for smoking, try chewing on carrots, pickles, sunflower seeds, apples, celery, or sugarless gum or hard candy. Keeping your month busy may stop the psychological need to smoke
• Try this exercise: take a deep breath through your nose and blow it out slowly through your mouth. Repeat 10 times
• Avoid situations and activities (such as drinking alcohol) that you normally associate with smoking
• Take 10 mg of B6, twice per day
• Take 1000 mg of vitamin C in conjunction with B6 twice per day. These supplements help quell the craving
Are you aware of the
extremely harmful effects
of secondhand smoke?
Even if you do not smoke, be aware of the dangers of secondhand smoke – which are considerable.
• Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke, is a complex mixture of gases and particles that include smoke from the burning cigarette, cigar or pipe (side-stream smoke) and exhaled mainstream smoke.
• Secondhand smoke contains at least 250 chemicals known to be toxic, including more than 50 that can cause cancer.
• Secondhand smoke exposure can cause heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults.
• Nonsmokers who are exposed to smoke increase their heart disease risk by 25% to 30%, and their lung cancer risk by 20% to 30%.
• Breathing secondhand smoke has immediate harmful effects on the cardiovascular system that can increase the risk of heart attack. People who already have heart disease are at especially high risk.
• Secondhand smoke exposure causes respiratory symptoms in children, and slows their lung growth.
• Secondhand smoke increases sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), acute respiratory infections, ear problems and more severe asthma in children.
• There is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure. Even brief exposure can be dangerous.
One final note on the skin-damaging effects of smoking. A study conducted in 2002 showed that facial wrinkling, while not yet visible, can be seen under a microscope in smokers as young as 20 years of age.
The horrors of smoking
for your skin
The effects of smoking on skin aging have been recognized for a long time. A 1965 study first identified what came to be known as “smoker’s face”-gray, pale and wrinkled skin. In recent years it has become broadly accepted that the skin is damaged by smoking making smokers look older than nonsmokers of the same chronological ages.
The Chief Medical Officer of the UK highlighted the link between smoking and skin damage, saying that smoking adds between 10 and 20 years to your natural age! So, how does smoking speed up skin damage?
It all starts with the free radicals formed in your body by exposure to tobacco smoke. As we know, free radicals are highly unstable and powerful molecules that cause inflammation, resulting in disease and damage to cell DNA. The cells of your body start behaving erratically, producing a range of responses that make your skin age faster.
Professor Anthony Young of Guys School of Medicine in London, who was the leader of the team that demonstrated in 2001 how collagen loss was accelerated by smoking stated: “Smoking exerts such a noticeable effect on the skin that it’s often possible to detect whether or not a person is a smoker simply by looking at his or her face. Smokers have more wrinkles, and their skin tends to have a grayish pallor compared to nonsmokers.”
As a fellow dermatologist I heartily agree with Professor Young’s statement. Just as you can identify people who eat large amounts of high glycemic carbohydrates by their “doughy” look and lack of facial contours, smokers are immediately identifiable by their unhealthy pallor, wrinkles, sagging and a thick, leathery look to their skin.
What will it take for
you to stop smoking?