Vitality News Health Articles

Youthful and soft skin is something we would all love to have. However, this is almost impossible to achieve while smoking, as smoking affects the skin more than almost any other substance. When I noticed this happening to me the first thing I did was stop smoking.

The Difficulties of Quitting

The main addictive ingredient in cigarettes is nicotine. This toxic poison has the ability to alter the state of your brain activity within the space of a few seconds and it affects the way we pay attention, think, eat, deal with stress, and feel pleasure.

With prolonged use of cigarettes, the brain and body gets accustomed to the increased levels of nicotine. When I didn’t have a cigarette, I would begin to feel withdrawal symptoms and would unconsciously tell myself ‘you need a cigarette’ in order to maintain my nicotine levels.

What smoking does to our bodies

Over 3,000 chemicals can be found in cigarettes. They affect your mouth and can cause cancer there, as well as in your lungs. One of the many chemicals in smoke, hydrogen cyanide, attacks the lining of your lungs, inflaming them and causing that chronic smoker’s cough. Smokers are 10 times as likely to get lung cancer and emphysema as nonsmokers.

Cigarette smoke causes terrible damage the bodies vascular system. My blood pressure would go up and my blood was clotting more easily when I used to smoke. This caused plaque build up on my artery walls, which could have resulted in a heart attack. Luckily I quit before it was too late.

To Stimulate Anti Aging, Quit Smoking

The following lists the effects of smoking on the skin:

- Wrinkles form in the lip area and the eye area from puckering lips and closing eyes from smoke.

- Severely dry skin: smoking severely dehydrates the skin, which also contributes to wrinkles. You will need a dry skin treatment to reverse this effect.

- Accelerated aging: carbon monoxide levels in the blood increase when you smoke, promoting age inducing free radicals in the skin.

- Decreased oxygen supply: smoking reduces the blood flow to the skin, because nicotine causes blood vessels to constrict, also contributing to aging

- Decreased levels of Vitamin C: Smoking lowers vitamin C levels in the body. Without vitamin C your body can’t produce collagen to repair its own skin, and vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant. Depleting your body of Vitamin C is like giving away your body’s natural youth serum.

Reversing the Effects of Smoking on Your Skin

When you quit smoking your body will start to heal itself, but the premature aging effects won’t go away by themselves. You will need some assistance in that area, and then you can be like me, a former smoker who now has beautifully soft skin. I used BIO Rose Hip Oil to treat my leathery dry skin, and I saw results immediately. Rose hip, also known as rosa mosqueta, is the fruit of the rose plant. Cigarette smoke depletes the body of Vitamin C so you will need to restore your bodies natural supply with skin renewal activators. Rose hip is the third highest source of vitamin C known to man, right after the scarce Kakadu plum and the rare Camu Camu fruit. Also a skin re-hydrator, BIO Rose Hip Oil is a strong and natural product for turning back the clock on smoking effects.

- Valerie DeVette