Give Up Smoking So Your Dark Don’t Crack

Give Up Smoking So Your Dark Don’t Crack

As the saying goes, “Black don’t crack,” but smoking can undoubtedly sway the balance regarding wrinkles, regardless of ethnicity. The lifestyle choice of smoking can seriously damage your skin and accelerate the natural ageing process, making it sag and wrinkle prematurely. Maybe it’s time to give up smoking.

Nicotine, the main ingredient in cigarettes, promotes dehydration, narrows blood vessels in the outer layers of the skin, and impairs blood flow, depleting the skin of oxygen and vital nutrients like vitamins A and C, which provide skin protection. Smoking also damages collagen and elastin, the proteins that give your skin strength and elasticity.

Not only does smoking cause wrinkles all over the face, irritate the eyes, and forces smokers to squint more, leading to increased wrinkles, especially around the eyes. Smokers can also develop hollowed cheeks around the mouth from years of dragging the cigarette between their lips.

No anti-ageing cream can remove the wrinkles caused by smoking. Quitting smoking is easier said than done, but there are methods to try, such as nicotine chewing gum or going cold turkey. You can also seek help from resources like Quit in the UK or consult with your family doctor.

One reason people avoid quitting smoking is the fear of gaining weight, but smoking can lead to weight gain as the body ages. While smoking may suppress appetite and increase the metabolic rate, it tends to dull taste buds, leading to a loss of appetite. Once taste buds regain their functionality, former smokers enjoy their meals more and eventually gain some weight.

Tobacco smoke contains 4,000 harmful substances, chemicals, and toxins, 60 known to cause cancer. Smokers who inhale a cigarette find cancer-causing toxins in the tar, and the lungs retain about 70% of that tar.

While quitting smoking, focus on a healthy diet and exercise regularly to bring blood to the skin’s surface and replenish the capillaries with oxygen. Avoid drinking alcohol or caffeine, as they dehydrate the skin, and consider taking food supplements to get your daily dose of Vitamin A and C.

Please don’t wait until it’s too late to give up smoking and save your skin from further damage. Remember, there are worse things that can happen aside from having wrinkles and sagging skin.

Tips

1. If you keep failing, have faith in yourself. You can do it.
2. It is important to remind yourself of the reasons why you want to quit smoking. Write them down and read them regularly.
3. Seek help from your support network, the ones you trust, in talking to you about quitting.
4. There are medical substitutes available that help people climb down on the amounts such as nicotine patches or chewing gum. Invest in whatever works for you.
5.  Setting a deadline by the end of which one must quit can help in some cases.
6. Find out which plan works best for you – an immediate stop, a gradual pulling out, or some combination.
7. Knowing and talking to people who have quit smoking can boost your morale.
8. Smoking could be related to poor health and regimen. Change your regimen and see if it can substitute for the need to smoke.
9. Visualise the lifestyle of a non-smoker, and find out why it is positive and good. This will increase the attraction toward the goal.

Photo: Hannah Cauhepe