Every year on May 31st, people around the world commemorate World No Tobacco Day. This yearly event seeks to raise awareness about the dangers of using tobacco. From Aesthetic and Wellness Clinic, we join this global campaign to promote healthy lifestyles and highlight how bad habits can affect your health and natural beauty too. For many people this gives them even more reasons to change their mind and start a new and better path.

Understanding the full scope of tobacco’s impact is crucial.: it’s well-known how smoking can harm our bodies, especially in terms of damaging vital internal organs like the lungs, heart, brain, and weakening the immune system among other daunting challenges to overall health. But did you know that smoking is also a collagen destroyer, leading to premature skin aging? Keep reading this blog to learn more about how tobacco affects our skin, causing damage from the inside that becomes visible on the outside.

Among all the negative effects smoking has on health, it also ages the skin, and this has been scientifically proven. The primary action of tobacco is nicotine, which causes vasoconstriction of blood vessels. In addition to this effect, inhaling carbon monoxide decreases cellular oxygenation. When smoking, ingested toxins generate free radicals that contribute to cell oxidation. This leads to cell dysfunction and much earlier aging as it affects the density and thickness of skin. 

On the other hand, the mechanism by which smoking ages the skin is related to collagen-degrading enzymes. When smoking, these enzymes are activated, leading to a faster destruction of collagen than normal in a non-smoker. Yes, even if we don’t smoke, collagen can decrease or be destroyed due to factors such as the passage of time, sun exposure, environmental pollution, unbalanced diets, stress, high sugar consumption, among others. As a result, with less collagen in the skin, it becomes slack, hardened, and less elastic.

If we add other unhealthy habits to smoking, such as not having a skincare routine or not using sunscreen, you can imagine that the speed of collagen destruction in the skin will be even higher.

Although comparative studies have been conducted on skin quality between smokers and non-smokers, perhaps the most striking studies are those done with twins. We’ll show you some examples so you can draw your own conclusions.