Does smoking affect your appearance?
You may answer “yes” without thinking. So how exactly does it affect appearance? I am afraid that many people can only give a vague answer or guess at this question.
Today we will introduce to you how smoking affects your appearance. Once you’ve read it, you’ll be able to show off your vast knowledge the next time someone talks to you about how disparately two people of the same age look and age differently.
01
Smoking and skin aging
2010, Chinese Journal of Aesthetic Medicine The published review “Advances in Smoking and Skin Aging” summarizes the mechanisms by which smoking promotes skin aging.
Toxic substances produced during smoking can directly act on the skin on the one hand, and indirectly act on the skin by entering the body on the other hand.
With the help of smoking, the chemicals produced during the burning of tobacco stimulate the oral mucosa, nasal mucosa, upper respiratory tract and lung tissue successively. Fat-soluble substances such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons can freely diffuse through the cell membrane and eventually enter the blood circulation; while hydrophilic substances can also pass through the lung-blood barrier through gas exchange after reaching the alveoli.
Once they enter the blood, these chemicals will successively combine with various blood cells, various transporters and other components, or directly dissolve in the blood, and circulate throughout the body’s various tissues and organs, including the skin.
Smoking causes skin ischemia, changes in skin tissue collagen content, up-regulation of matrix metalloproteinases, inhibits transforming growth factor β1, inhibits estrogen synthesis, and promotes skin aging.
How smoking promotes skin aging[1]
For postmenopausal women, smokers are more likely to have wrinkles on their faces, and Use of estrogen replacement therapy does not reduce the risk of skin wrinkles in smokers.
In addition, the repeated puffing action during smoking will cause the cheeks to sink in, and the long-term subconscious eye deflection caused by the habitual movement of the corners of the mouth and the stimulation of the smoke can cause wrinkles, and also aggravate the skin to a certain extent. degree of aging.
Smoking accelerates skin aging and can be avoided by quitting tobacco. It’s important to note that normal skin aging that occurs with age is a natural physiological change, and there is no need for appearance anxiety or age anxiety.
After talking about the effect of smoking on facial skin, let’s sell a word for the next topic that is about to unfold.
But if you’re careful enough, I believe you’ve noticed that the expression “facial skin” is used in the paragraph just now, not “skin”.
Why is this? Because in the human head and face skin, in addition to the facial skin, there is also the head skin, which accounts for two-thirds of the area, that is, our scalp.
From the harm of smoking to facial skin, it is not difficult to infer that smoking also has harm to head skin. Hazards that act on the scalp fall on the hair rooted in the scalp. Smoking and hair loss is our next topic.
02
Smoking and hair loss
Review of the research progress on the effect of smoking on skin diseases pointed out that smoking and ultraviolet radiation are the main exogenous factors that cause hair loss. A cross-sectional survey showed that androgenetic alopecia was significantly associated with smoking status, and that the history of early onset increased in a dose-dependent manner with the number of cigarettes smoked.
Smoking-induced oxidative stress and imbalance of antioxidant system may be one of the main mechanisms of hair loss. On the one hand, oxidative stress can cause the growth of hair follicle keratinocytes to be inhibited; on the other hand, the reactive oxygen species produced by tobacco smoke extract through endogenous and exogenous pathways can lead to the early onset of the catagen phase of the hair cycle.
The effect of smoking is two-pronged, and the situation of hair is precarious.
03
Smoking and skin damage
Whether it is reflected in face or hair volume, beauty The effects are all the result of smoking harming the skin. What is more worthy of attention than the change in appearance is the harm of smoking to skin health.
A large number of studies have shown that smoking is associated with a series of skin lesions such as scarring, atopic dermatitis, palmoplantar pustulosis, basal cell carcinoma, melanoma, acne, alopecia, and scaling.
A study published in 2019 by the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom suggests that smoking may affect the body’s immune system’s ability to fight the main skin cancer, melanoma. Compared with non-smoking melanoma patients, the survival rate of melanoma patients with a long history of smoking is significantly reduced.
Currently, most studies have identified smoking as an independent risk factor for squamous cell carcinoma, and smoking is associated with increased risk of squamous cell carcinoma of the penis, vulva, cervix, anus, oral cavity, and head and neck.
That’s all for today’s three topics. The next time you meet a beauty-loving friend who smokes, try using these arguments to persuade him to quit.
For the sake of appearance and health, stop smoking scientifically. I hope everyone can get rid of the smoke in front of them and live a healthy, light and vigorous life!
Source: Wechat Public Account for Scientific Rumors
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