Smoking & Hair Loss:
Six Different Ways Smoking Contributes to Hair Loss
Let’s state the obvious here! There is nothing good that smoking does to your health. We all know that! It harms your body from the inside and out!
Smoking has been proved to cause many conditions like cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, diabetes, and many more diseases that threaten our health and life.
Smoking cigars, cigarettes, pipes, etc., also changes our appearance. Smoking causes early wrinkles, sagging skin, and even hair loss.
If you are a chronic smoker, you might have experienced thinning hair and receding hairlines or even some bald spots here and there. This might be because of your constant exposure to smoke.
Smoking is proved to be the cause of many serious, chronic illnesses. It is also one of the causes of hair loss.
This article looks at the connection between smoking and hair loss and how smoking can cause hair loss. We also cover if hair loss caused by smoking can be reversed and the different ways to quit smoking.
Below is the table of content of this article for you to jump to the section you are most interested in:
How Does Smoking Cause Hair Loss?
Does Vaping Have the Same Effect on Hair?
How To Treat Hair Loss Caused by Smoking?
Quit Smoking Today
Final Words
How Does Smoking Cause Hair Loss?
There are many ways smoking can cause hair loss, and we will discuss them in detail below.
But first, let’s mention that there are toxic chemicals that are produced when smoking tobacco. Formaldehyde, arsenic, hydrogen cyanide, lead and ammonia are a few of them. These chemicals have harmful effects on your health in general.
But let’s talk about how they can cause hair loss:
1- Smokin harms blood vessels.
The hair on top of the scalp is dead. True! But, underneath the skin of your head, there are blood vessels that bring nutrients and blood to the follicles.
When you smoke, the toxic chemicals in the cigarettes both harm the blood vessels and cause the heart not to function as it should.
The nutrients and the oxygen that blood vessels and the heart are responsible for bringing to all body parts are essential for hair growth in the follicles.
2- Oxidative stress.
Free radicals are molecules that can basically affect other molecules and potentially damage your DNA cells.
When the amount of activity of free radicals increases in the body, oxidative stress happens. Hair follicles are highly sensitive to oxidative stress, based on a study.
The following can cause oxidative stress:
- tobacco smoke
- pollution
- radiation
- ultraviolet rays
Now, when the amount of the toxic chemicals increases in our system, they damage the DNA in hair follicles, which results in impaired hair growth.
3- Smoking weakens the immune system.
Smoking cigarettes can decrease the immunity system in our bodies. Without a proper immune system, our bodies might develop diseases that ultimately cause hair loss.
At the same time, the lack of immunity causes the development of bacterial or fungal infections on the scalp, which stops the follicles from growing healthy hair.
4- Smoking increases the level of cortisol.
Cortisol is the name of the hormone that our body produces in times of stress, when we are stuck in traffic, dealing with everyday challenges and meeting deadlines.
This hormone is obviously there to help us deal with stress. But, it is also essential for the function and regulation of hair follicles.
Now, when you smoke a lot, the nicotine in the cigarette cause cortisol levels to gradually increase.
The increase of cortisol impairs some compounds, like hyaluronan and proteoglycan, which are necessary for hair follicle development. This hair loss in the form of telogen effluvium and androgenetic alopecia is stress-related.
If you are interested in reading more about stress-related hair loss, read the following article in UPGUYS:
Read more: Stress-Related Hair Loss In Men: What Are The Symptoms, And Can It Be Reversed
Also: Treatments For Hair Loss Due To Stress
5- Smoking cigarettes cause pollution.
If you are a smoker and constantly smoke inside your room or in your car with the windows rolled up, you should know that you are adding to the pollution in your environment. How does it affect your hair?
The main reason behind hair loss is genetics. But, according to research, pollution can cause thinning hair. Not only that, polluted air can aggravate genetic hair loss as well.
6- Endocrine diseases.
The endocrine system is basically a messenger system, a well-connected network of glands. It regulates all the biological processes in our body. But, some external factors, like smoking, can interrupt its function.
Smoking can cause diabetes and Grave’s hyperthyroidism, both two endocrine diseases.
Grave hyperthyroidism is when the thyroid gland, a part of the endocrine system, produces excess amounts of the thyroid hormone.
Grave hyperthyroidism and diabetes cause hair loss.
Does Vaping Have the Same Effect on Hair?
Vaping is relatively new, and there is still not enough research done to see if and how it harms our health. Having said that, recent studies show that vaping causes DNA damage and oxidative stress, both of which have a negative impact on hair, as explained above.
More research is needed to understand how it can affect our hair or possibly cause hair loss.
How To Treat Hair Loss Caused by Smoking?
We have understood so far that smoking causes hair loss. But, the question is how we can treat hair loss caused by smoking.
One obvious solution is to stop smoking and stop entering its toxins and side effects into your body. We will discuss this in more detail below, as quitting smoking is not easy to do.
Talk to your doctor about the treatments for hair loss caused by smoking. Get the prescription, apply the medication and give it time to see the result.
There are also some medical treatments your doctor might suggest to you. The following are a couple of treatments available to address and solve this type of hair loss:
- Minoxidil: Minoxidil (Rogaine) comes in the form of a liquid or foam and is applied to the scalp once or twice a day. It comes in different doses, prescribed by practitioners to solve hair loss.
Minoxidil works as a vasodilator, which simply means it helps dilate the blood vessels in the scalp to increase blood flow. The exact mechanism of action of minoxidil is still not clear.
- Finasteride: Finasteride comes in the form of pills in different doses. Physicians prescribe finasteride, and the doctor decides what dosage can best address hair loss. Finasteride’s mechanism of action is to prevent testosterone from breaking down into DHT or dihydrotestosterone.
DHT is a hormone that causes hair follicles to shrink and eventually stop growing.
- Minoxidil + Finasteride: Some physicians may suggest that to maximize the chances of saving your hair, it’s best to use both minoxidil and finasteride together.
A minoxidil + finasteride combination can bring both individual benefits to battle hair loss and slow down, stop, and in the best-case scenario, reverse hair loss and help some of the lost hair to grow back.
Read more: Finasteride And Minoxidil: Can They Be Used Together For Best Results?
Quit Smoking Today
The most obvious solution to all we talked about so far is to quit smoking and prevent the toxins from your body. And it is easier said than done, and you obviously might need a few tries!
There are many ways you can try and quit smoking once and for all, and in this section, we want to talk about that.
Quit smoking today and promote your general health, on top of the health of your hair follicles. It is worth the difficulty!
If you’ve already tried to quit smoking a couple of times, know that it usually takes a few tries to be successful.
If you are looking for ways to try quitting, take a look at the list we prepared for you:
- Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) replaces some of the nicotine you used to get from cigarettes so that you feel a bit better when you first stop smoking.
- Bupropion and varenicline are FDA-approved quit-smoking pills that need to be prescribed for use.
- Hypnosis, where the patient is asked to imagine unpleasant scenarios with smoking. For instance, the therapist might suggest that the smell of cigarettes is similar to the smell of exhaust.
- Acupuncture and meditation also have proven to help.
- Support therapies like counselling or support groups also make the process of quitting smoking much more manageable.
- Reduce temptation by avoiding the people or environments that encourage smoking. Stay away from temptation.
- Quitting apps are also there to help out.
- Go cold turkey.
Final Words
Smoking is addictive. That’s why it is tough to stop it. Some people turn to cigarettes to be able to deal with their personal challenges in life, but smoking only adds to other kinds of problems, like heart diseases, lung diseases, diabetes, cancer, and, as we discussed above, hair loss.
We discussed how smoking can harm hair growth and cause hair loss in many different ways. We also introduced a couple of treatments available.
To get better information regarding treatments out there for hair loss caused by smoking, talk to your doctor or get connected to UPGUYS. We connect you to a Canadian practitioner for free to be able to discuss your options.
UPGUYS Products: Order Minoxidil + Finasteride Online in Canada
We get that smoking is hard to shake off. But there are a lot of support and therapies that can help facilitate the process.
You can either go cold turkey or go through nicotine replacement therapy or take quit-smoking medications. Whatever you do, know that the result, which is a longer, healthier life, is much worth it. On top of all you gain, you’ll also have your hair!
