The damaging effects of smoking are well-documented but here let’s look at the harm it does your skin.
Smoking just one cigarette constricts your blood flow for as long as 90 minutes. This means your inhibited circulation is actually starving your skin of oxygen.
At the same time the effects of smoking are breaking down your collagen and elastin, the essential scaffolding of your skin.
Meanwhile every time you take a drag you purse those lips and furrow your brow. These habitual, repetitive motions show as ‘smoker’s lines’: those tell-tale deep lines around the mouth and vertical lines between the eyebrows.
It doesn’t stop there: there is also the ‘toxic cloud’ effect. When you breathe out, all the nicotine, chemicals and tobacco floats over your face. This further compromises your skin and manifests itself as bags under the eyes, loss of natural glow and premature ageing.
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By Mandy Oxley-Swan
