Thursday Q+A: Why Does Smoking Cause Wrinkles?

This is going to surprise many of you. When I asked this question to a sample of skin-savvy people the two most common answers were:

1. That smoking decreases the available oxygen around the facial skin. And the decreased oxygen to the skin cells causes degradation and therefore wrinkles. (TRUE)

2. That smoking is a an extremely potent source of Free Radicals which damages skin cells and leads to wrinkles and other pre-mature aging symptoms. (TRUE)

But as it turns out, there is another reason that smoking causes those deep wrinkles, even on relatively young people who smoke heavily. According to renowned cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Eric Mariotti, the factor that contributes the most to wrinkles has to do with blood circulation. Smoking causes blood vessels to constrict, which in turn reduces the amount of blood that can reach the skin cells. This causes a lot of nutrients, like Glucose and Antioxidants, to not reach these cells and they begin to degrade and cause wrinkles.

This is an important lesson and is closely related to many earlier posts which explained the importance of getting those critical antioxidants and micronutrients to the skin cells to stop pre-mature aging.

One thing you can do is take a skin supplement product that contains L-Arginine, like Internal Affair. This critical amino acid relaxes blood vessels allowing the nutrients to reach the skin cells.