Quit Smoking to Look Beautiful

When you’re in your 20s and 30s, most of us are blessed with unlimited health. So the incentive to quit smoking to maintain good health may not be enough to motivate you to stop.

If maintaining good health is not going to get you off the smokes, then how about looking youthful, beautiful and pretty. If you’re really concerned about your looks, then hopefully you are vain enough to stop smoking to look your best.

The effects of smoking on your appearance can be very damaging. Here are 10 nasty ways smoking can effect your beauty.

Stained Teeth

The nicotine in cigarettes can stain teeth permanently. So unless you have $500 – $1000 to spare to clean and whiten your teeth, it’s a good reason to cut down and quit smoking.

Tooth Loss

So you can whiten your stained teeth with $1000. But it’ll cost you a lot more to replace a loss tooth. Smoking puts you at greater risk for all kinds of dental problems, including oral cancer and gum disease. In a 2005 U.K. study in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology, smokers are up to six times more likely than nonsmokers to develop gum disease, which can lead to tooth loss.

Look to spend an extra $5000 to have an artificial tooth implanted.

Thinning Hair and Baldness

Stained teeth can be whitened, loss tooth can be replaced. But thinning hair and baldness is something the medical world still has limited solutions for.

Experts believe the toxic chemicals in smoke can damage the DNA in hair follicles and generate cell-damaging free radicals as well.

The end result? Smokers have thinner hair that tends to go gray sooner than nonsmokers. That is, if they have any hair at all.

Men who smoke are about twice as likely to lose their hair as nonsmokers, after taking into account factors that increase the risk of baldness, such as aging and genetics, according to a 2007 study in Taiwan.

Premature aging and fine lines

The most common negative effect of smoking is the acceleration of aging. Why the wrinkly face? Smoking hampers the blood supply that keeps skin tissue looking supple and healthy.

Dull looking skin
Smoking causes a grey appearance of the skin.

Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide, which displaces the oxygen in your skin, and nicotine, which reduces blood flow, leaving skin dry and discolored. Cigarette smoking also depletes many nutrients, including vitamin C, which helps protect and repair skin damage.

Warts
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, smokers are more susceptible to infection with human papillomavirus, a large family of viruses that can cause warts—including genital warts.

While genital warts are caused by sexually transmitted types of HPV, smoking is also a risk factor. Even taking the number of sex partners into account, women who smoke are nearly four times as likely to have genital warts as nonsmokers, according to one study.

Stretch Marks
Anyone with sudden weight gain or weight loss can develop stretch marks. But smoking can make the stretch mark problem worse. The nicotine found in cigarettes damages the fibers and connective tissue in your skin, causing it to lose elasticity and strength making your skin more prone to stretch marks.

Slow wound healing and possible Scarring

Nicotine causes vasoconstriction, a narrowing of the blood vessels that can limit oxygen-rich blood flow to the tiny vessels in the face or other parts of the body. This means your wounds will take longer to heal and you’ll have scars that are bigger and redder than you would in a nonsmoking parallel universe.

Eczema, Psoriasis, Acne

Eczema, psoriasis, acne…… or any other rash condition you can think of. Smokers increase their risk of developing some sort of rash condition.

According to a 2007 study, if you puff a pack a day for 10 years or less, psoriasis risk goes up 20%; 11–20 years and your risk is 60% higher; and for those who pass the two-decade mark, the psoriasis risk more than doubles.

Cancer
Smoking will take your health away. Smoking is a leading cause of cancer, including lung, throat, mouth, and esophageal cancer, so it should be no surprise that cigarettes can also increase your risk of skin cancer. The money you have to fork out for therapy and treatment would be tens of thousands of dollars. The painful medical treatments that you will have to endure is just not worth it.

Wouldn’t it be easier—and less painful—to just quit? Easier said than done. Hopefully if you are vain enough to look beautiful, you’ll be wise enough to quit.

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