You turn on your TV or pick a newspaper or magazine, you would find a lot of messages, articles and commercials circulated by government agencies to aware people about the harmful effects of smoking. Most of the smokers would simply avoid these health alarms. But, if are a person suffering from psoriasis, you can’t afford to ignore that message and continue doing this useless practice of inhaling smoke inside and then exhaling.
In various clinical studies, it has been observed that smoking triggers psoriasis. Not sure if smoking has some role to play in developing psoriasis, but psoriasis symptoms do get worsen with smoking. This is a feedback given by many people suffering from psoriasis.
Going one step ahead, some studies have really surprised the whole medical world by revealing their study results that chain smoking can even play a crucial role in psoriasis development also.
One such study, conducted by Dr. Luigi Naldi in 1999 claims that in the case of chain smoking (20 cigarettes or more a day), chances of developing psoriasis are more than twice as compared to non smokers. For women, this ratio is even higher than men.
Also read: Psoriasis and alcohol
Smoking is a bigger culprit for women than men
In the above mentioned study conducted by Dr. Naldi, he concluded that women who smoke are more susceptible to psoriasis attack than men.
Similarly, according to The National Psoriasis Foundation, a trusted global body working for people suffering from psoriasis, women who smoke have a higher risk of getting attacked by psoriasis than men who smoke.
Hence, smoking is a bigger culprit for women than men.
Passive smoking (second hand smoking) and Psoriasis
Passive smoking means inhaling smoke which is exhaled by another person who is smoking near by. Even if you don’t smoke, but you spend enough time in the vicinity of other people who smoke (especially in closed environments), then also you are doing injustice to your skin because breathing in such an environment would make you inhale a lot of harmful smoke which can trigger your psoriasis.
In a prolonged study covering more than 78000 nurses, their health conditions were monitored for 14 years. In this study, it was concluded that nurses who smoke were more vulnerable to psoriasis attack than non smokers. Also, they found passive smoking (second hand smoking) as a culprit as well. The nurses who themselves don’t smoke, but share their rooms with other nurses who smoke were at a higher risk of developing psoriasis than those non smoker nurses who don’t experience passive smoking.
Smoking can activate the psoriasis causing genes
If you have a family history of psoriasis, if psoriasis have a genetic element in your case, then you need to be more cautious. You need to make sure that your children stay away from smoking because smoking can active the psoriasis causing genes in your children which would eventually result in the development of psoriasis in them.
Smoking is not a stress buster, rather it increases stress
Among smokers, there is a general belief that smoking relieves stress. It is not true. In actual, the stress level of smokers is higher than non smokers. Nicotine, one of the chief ingredients of tobacco is a central nervous system stimulant. It makes you feel enthusiastic and energized for a little while. Gradually, its effect diminishes, you feel tired and frustrated and you crave for more cigarette. This whole process would end up making you more stressed and demotivated.
Psoriasis itself is a stressful condition where you are dealing with high level of stress and anxiety on a daily basis. If you smoke by habit, then you may start depending more and more on smoking in order to cope up with that stress and tension (related to psoriasis). As explained earlier, smoking gives a temporary mood swing and then it makes you more frustrated. Hence, relying on smoking to reduce stress is a very bad idea actually. It would ultimately make you more stressed than before.
This vicious circle can really take a toll on you and make you suffer more. This is why, it has been always believed that stress management have a very crucial role to play in the journey of healing psoriasis.
Click here to read: Stress can trigger Psoriasis
This vicious circle of stress and smoking can really trigger you psoriasis like hell.
Psoriasis and Smoking – Things to know
Below points would empower you to understand that why smoking is bad for psoriasis:
- Do you know that generally a cigarette contains more than 4000 chemicals and out of them roughly 70 are cancer causing. One of the chief ingredients of cigarette, Nicotine can be a possible culprit affecting our body’s immunity in a negative way and increase the growth of skin cells. Moreover, nicotine increases skin inflammation as well.
Read more: Turmeric is an anti-inflammatory herb for Psoriasis
- Apart from Nicotine, Nickel (another ingredient of cigarette smoke) can also contribute towards psoriasis worsening as a result of heavy metal toxicity in your body.
- Smoking do cause significant damage to the digestive system. It damages the inner lining of the esophagus ( food pipe from throat to stomach) and weakens the esophageal sphincter to cause acid reflux and heartburn. It can cause peptic ulcers and leaky gut syndrome.
- Smoking suppresses appetite which would result in deficiency of vital nutrients that your body needs.
- Dealing with psoriasis, a person goes through various points of emotional stress and trauma and habits like smoking can really stretch such emotional stress periods to exist for a longer time and hence worsen the situation.
- Also, smoking reduces the chances of remission of psoriasis. Non smokers can experience the complete disappearance of psoriasis flakes of skin in their life time, but a smoker will hardly have such an experience.
- Smoking accelerates the production of free radicals which would cause premature ageing and wrinkles formation. Also, thousands of chemicals in cigarette tobacco can cause oxidative damage to your skin cells.
- Smoking can reduce the level of moisture in your skin, making it dry and itchy. A study conducted in Israel found that women who smoke a pack of cigarettes (10 cigarettes) per day had a significantly lower moisture level in their skin than non smoker women
Read more: How to select a moisturizer for Psoriasis
- Smoking results in tightening of your body vessels. It would result in obstructed blood circulation and hence lesser circulation of oxygen in your various body organs. Insufficient oxygen means an open invitation to various health problems.
Read more: Yoga for Psoriasis
Hence, quitting or cutting down on smoking is definitely a welcome step in order to make peace with an auto-immune disorder like psoriasis.
Smoking is a stubborn addiction
We should not turn our faces from this reality that if psoriasis is a stubborn problem, then smoking is also a stubborn addiction which is really hard to give up. Nicotine is very addictive in nature and a person needs to have a lot of patience and a strong determination to quit this habit. You can either adopt a detailed action plan to quit this habit gradually or you can just make a firm decision to quit it once for ever. Family support, strong will power and in some cases, professional help are required to make your plan a success.
Why, sometimes quitting smoking worsen psoriasis
It is strange to hear, but it is true that some people would say that quitting smoking worsen their psoriasis instead of making it better. The obvious reason behind such a strange reaction is- Stress, anxiety and tremendous pressure to stick to your ‘NO SMOKING’ resolution. Due to the highly addictive nature of cigarette tobacco, giving up smoking is always a highly stressful condition.
Let us try to elaborate this scenario further:
- If you are a smoker since quite a long time, then quitting smoking can impose serious smoking withdrawal symptoms. Physical symptoms like- Shaking, sweating, nausea, headache. Mental symptoms like- Anger, mood swings, boredom. Fighting these unpleasant symptoms, you would feel a tremendous pressure during initial days of smoking give up. Such a fierce attack of stress can cause psoriasis break out.
- As explained earlier, regular smoking can suppress your appetite. It hinders the process of absorption of vital vitamins and minerals in your body and make you deficient in vital nutrients. When you are smoking regularly, your body is maintaining the status quo to make you feel normal. Once you stop smoking, your body would start reacting to those nutritional deficiencies and make you feel tired, less energetic and lifeless.
- Due to lack of patience, sometimes, people would demand miraculous results after quitting smoking. We should not forget that psoriasis is one of the most complex skin disorder and it is impractical to expect miraculous results within a short span of time. Due to such unrealistic expectations, you can feel frustrated and anxious.
We should remember that giving up on smoking doesn’t necessarily clear psoriasis. But, there is no doubt that this practice would relieve the psoriasis symptoms in a longer period of time. Psoriasis and smoking; it is a terrible combination. Hence, if you have psoriasis, try to stay away from smoking.
Conclusion
Smoking hampers your skin health in a number of ways by developing symptoms like dark circles, wrinkles, premature aging and even skin cancer. Role of smoking in the development of psoriasis is still not clear. But, a lot of studies have revealed that psoriasis and smoking don’t go well together. Personal experiences of various people (having psoriasis) do support this claim.
- If you have psoriasis and you are not a smoker, it is awesome. Never ever try giving it (smoking) a shot even if your friends encourage you to do so just for a temporary joy because you may be paying a very big price for that short time joy.
- In other case, if you are a smoker; need to make an immediate plan to cut down on it and gradually quit it completely in the long run to make peace with your psoriasis.
- If psoriasis runs in your family, then make sure your children don’t smoke because smoking can activate the psoriasis causing genes to attack your children and make them suffer.
- Remember that quitting smoking doesn’t necessarily clear your psoriasis but it would definitely relieve the symptoms in the long run. By the way, quitting smoking has so many other health benefits to enjoy.
References
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15982303
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17976422
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696351/
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1679-45082012000100010
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