Yellow fingers

The nicotine in cigarette smoke can not only make your teeth (and the walls of your home) brown, but it’s also notorious for staining fingers and nails as well.

If you search the Internet, you can find a number of home remedies, including lemon juice, bleach solutions, and scrubbing with steel wool. Ouch.

Wouldn’t it be easier—and less painful—to just quit?

Thinner hair

As if the wrinkly skin wasn’t enough, smoking hurts your hair too. Experts think the toxic chemicals in smoke can damage the DNA in hair follicles and generate cell-damaging free radicals as well.

The end result? Smokers have thinner hair that tends to go gray sooner than nonsmokers. That is, if they have any hair at all.

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Men who smoke are about twice as likely to lose their hair as nonsmokers, after taking into account factors that increase the risk of baldness, such as aging and genetics, according to a 2007 study in Taiwan.

Scarring

Nicotine causes vasoconstriction, a narrowing of the blood vessels that can limit oxygen-rich blood flow to the tiny vessels in the face or other parts of the body.

This means your wounds will take longer to heal and you’ll have scars that are bigger and redder than you would in a nonsmoking parallel universe.

Tooth loss

Smoking puts you at greater risk for all kinds of dental problems, including oral cancer and gum disease.

In fact, according to a 2005 U.K. study in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology, smokers are up to six times more likely than nonsmokers to develop gum disease, which can lead to tooth loss.

Wouldn’t you rather be doing, well, anything other than sitting in a dentist’s chair?

Natural glow is gone

Ever notice how smokers’ skin sometimes seems off? You’re not alone. A 1985 study came up with the term Smoker’s Face to describe certain facial characteristics, such as wrinkles, gauntness, and a gray appearance of the skin, caused by smoking.

Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide, which displaces the oxygen in your skin, and nicotine, which reduces blood flow, leaving skin dry and discolored. Cigarette smoking also depletes many nutrients, including vitamin C, which helps protect and repair skin damage.

Wound healing

Several studies have found that smokers do not heal as well after surgeries such as face-lifts, tooth extractions, and periodontal procedures.

So once cigarettes wrinkle up your face, you’ll have a harder time correcting the damage with cosmetic surgery than people who’ve never smoked. (And your surgeon might not even perform the procedure until you agree to kick the habit.)

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