Smoking is a bad habit, and aside from causing cancer, heart disease, and other life-threatening health problems, it also affects your physical beauty. That’s right, it’s time for both the ladies and gentlemen to pay attention, because that cigarette could be costing you the youthful beauty you’re accustomed to.
Cigarettes contain thousands of chemicals and additives, and not one of those chemicals does anything good for your skin or internal organs. Smoking can be attributed to almost 480,000 deaths per year in the US alone, but before you lose your life, you’re going to lose your looks. Here are five ways smoking ruins your beauty.
Chapter Overview
1. Sagging Skin
The chemicals and additives in cigarette smoke begin undoing your youthful beauty at skin level. At first, your skin will start to sag, especially around the mouth and eyes. You’ll develop baggy eyes, sagging skin around the corners of your mouth, and even drooping skin around your cheekbones and facial features.
This can make you look much older than you actually are, especially if you’ve been smoking for an extended period of time. Smoking inhibits blood flow and makes it more difficult for the heart and lungs to deliver oxygen-rich blood to skin cells, among others. What does your skin need to stay healthy and form properly around your tissue and bones? Oxygen-rich blood, of course!
The bottom line is that smoking will cause your facial features to change over time, giving you a more haggard and aged look. Even if you’re in your 20s, you could look up to 1.5 times your actual age if you’re a frequent smoker; and who wants that?
2. Wrinkles
Another sign of aging are the tell-tale wrinkles that develop on the face. From crow’s feet around the eyes to wrinkles around the mouth, smoking can cause premature aging by helping dampen blood flow to your skin cells. Without a healthy blood supply, skin droops and wrinkles, turning your visage into an unrecognizable image in just a few short years.
Don’t forget that smoking is damaging your internal organs simultaneously. The heart, lungs, throat, and other important organs are under constant attack when you’re smoking, so wrinkles are probably the least of your worries.
Protecting one’s beauty for as long as possible seems to be something of a necessity in our society, which is why many smokers are choosing alternatives to help them get off of cigarettes for good. Products like tobacco free pouches offer a different take on nicotine consumption, without the harmful effects of tobacco and all the chemicals that come with cigarettes.
3. Discoloration
Aside from wrinkling and sagging, smoking can also cause discoloration of the skin, giving a sickly hue to your external organ. You’ve probably noticed that your fingers have turned slightly brownish-yellow over time, and that’s from the constant supply of cigarette smoke and nicotine.
Discoloration isn’t so bad, right? Especially if it’s just on the fingers? Unfortunately, the skin discoloration from smoking isn’t limited to the tips of your fingers. You’ll find that your face, arms, and neck may also become discolored with a sickly yellowish hue.
4. Smell
Alright, let’s address the elephant in the room here. Cigarettes. Stink. They have an unpleasant aroma that sticks to everything within a ten-foot radius of the smoker. Hair, clothes, furniture, walls, breath, nearly every surface around the smoker becomes infected with the stench, and it is very hard to clean off.
Let’s say you’re dating around, and you meet someone you really like. The minute you light up, they say they’re not interested. Why? Because non-smokers, for the most part, don’t appreciate the smell that accompanies a cigarette. Smokers often take their habit into confined spaces as well, such as cars and homes, where the smell (and the harmful effects of smoking) are amplified.
The bottom line? Your cigarette stinks, and hygiene is an important component of overall beauty.
5. Teeth
Last, but certainly not least, we come to one of the most important pieces of the overall beauty puzzle: that shining white smile. Only it’s not shining white anymore, is it? The cigarettes you’ve smoked your entire life have discolored your teeth, weakened the enamel, and likely caused gum problems as well.
A smile can say a lot about a person, and taking care of your teeth is no joke. Even if you brush on a daily basis, three times per day, one cigarette can undo all of your hard work. Are you noticing a pattern here? Smoking cigarettes does absolutely nothing for your beauty except prematurely age your skin, discolor some of your most important physical features, and possibly cause cancer. Is it really worth it?
Final Thoughts
Smoking is a harmful habit that does more than just damage your internal organs. Every part of your body is negatively affected by cigarettes. It’s time to ditch the habit and take back control of your looks, your internal organ health, and your life!