Hair today, gone — and gray — tomorrow.
More than 80 million people deal with hair loss, making prevention and growth a major industry.
But while some causes are genetic and tough to head off, at least one threat to your luscious mane is within your control — and if you don’t avoid it, you’re looking at thinning and graying in your future.
If you’re one of the nearly 29 million adults who light up a cigarette on the daily, you may want to cut back or quit altogether to keep your hairline intact.
There’s strong evidence that smoking is connected to androgenetic alopecia, the technical term for hair loss.
A review of several studies found that cigarette use can make you go balder sooner than you’d like in a number of ways.
Having a smoke reduces blood flow, a function necessary for healthy hair growth. It can also damage DNA and the hair follicle, preventing future growth.
Smoking a cigarette may increase hormone levels, particularly steroid hormones like androgens. One type of androgen? Dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which causes hairs to fall out sooner than normal by shrinking hair follicles and shortening the hair growth cycle.
And while taking a drag may provide stress relief in the moment, it can also increase signs of aging — including on your scalp.
Oxidative stress is an imbalance between free radicals (unstable molecules) and antioxidants in the body. This stress can cause inflammation of the hair follicles, slowing down growth, and even cause premature cell death.
Speaking of aging, those regular ciggies may turn what remaining hair is left prematurely gray.
A 2013 study published in the Indian Dermatology Online Journal found that around 50% of participants who smoked saw gray hairs before the age of 30.
And compared to nonsmokers, smokers were two-and-a-half times more likely to develop early onset graying — even those who had just one cigarette a year.
That’s not to mention all the other ways smoking can wreck your body — and researchers have found that mental and physical health issues kick in by your mid-30s.
Lighting up is also more likely to bring about hair loss in women by causing hormonal imbalances with lower-than-normal levels of estrogen that affect hair growth patterns.
But while there’s strong evidence that smoking causes hair loss, there isn’t enough research on whether quitting cold turkey makes it all grow back.
Besides going bald and causing gray hair, smoking is also responsible for a host of health problems like lung cancer and increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
