Does Smoking Cause Hair Loss?

Key takeaways

Smoking increases the likelihood of premature hair loss.
Nicotine constricts blood vessels, limiting nutrient supply.
Hormonal imbalances from smoking impact hair follicles.
Oxidative stress caused by smoking harms hair quality.
Weakened immune response due to smoking affects follicles.

Keeping your hair looking beautiful and healthy isn’t just about sticking to a good hair care routine.

It’s also about making sure your body is well taken care of.

A balanced diet that includes essential vitamins and minerals like zinc, iron, vitamin D, and protein is key to keeping your hair in top shape.

However, if you’re regularly smoking, it’s a different story. Cigarette smoke can leave your hair unhealthy, smelly, and even lead to premature hair loss.

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Studies show that smokers are much more likely to experience hair loss earlier than non-smokers.

While hair loss is often linked to genetics, age, and general health, the hazardous chemicals in cigarette smoke can speed up the process significantly.

Beyond that, smoking is already known to contribute to a range of health issues—from respiratory problems to heart disease.

Read on to discover how smoking can lead to hair loss in both men and women.

Reduced Blood Circulation

Your blood is responsible for delivering essential vitamins and nutrients to all parts of your body, including your hair, to help it grow and stay healthy.

If your blood circulation isn’t up to scratch, you could be at risk of early hair loss.

For your hair follicles to thrive, the circulatory system needs to be in good shape, as it delivers the nutrients and oxygen they need.

But if you’re a regular smoker, this becomes a problem.

The excessive nicotine from smoking constricts your blood vessels, limiting the amount of oxygen and vital nutrients reaching your hair follicles.

On top of that, carbon monoxide from cigarette smoke further reduces the oxygen in your bloodstream.

This combination weakens your hair follicles, leaving your hair more fragile, prone to breakage, and likely to thin over time.

Disruption of Hormonal Balance

Hormones play a huge role in our growth, sexual health, and overall well-being. When properly nourished, they help the body to continuously develop and improve.

However, smoking introduces harmful chemicals that disrupt your body’s natural hormonal balance. This imbalance can lead to delayed periods, lower libido, and sharp fluctuations in testosterone production.

Hormonal imbalances also have a direct impact on your hair follicles. Both men and women have cortisol and estrogen, two hormones that affect hair health.

When cortisol levels rise—often due to chronic stress—it can trigger hair loss.

Smoking alone adds significant stress to the body through the chemicals in cigarette smoke, which is ironic when you think about how some people find smoking ‘relaxing’.

This spike in cortisol production causes damage to the hair follicles, making them weak.

Moreover, estrogen levels are just as important for healthy hair. If you smoke, chemicals in the smoke can lead to estrogen fluctuations, resulting in hair thinning and increased shedding—especially in women.

Keeping your hormones in balance is key, and smoking definitely tips the scales in the wrong direction.

Oxidative Stress and DNA Damage

You’ve probably heard the term “free radicals,” which cause oxidative stress on the body.

If your body has a high level of oxidative stress, it can damage your DNA, directly affecting your hair growth, along with causing other chronic issues, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and others.

Chemicals in cigarette smoke expose the body to a barrage of free radicals, leading to high levels of oxidative stress. Unfortunately, the hair follicle is highly susceptible to oxidative damage.

As soon as oxidative stress surpasses the body’s natural defence mechanisms, it will cause irreparable damage to the hair follicles and cause the gradual deterioration of hair quality.

Weakened Immune Response

Will smoking cause hair loss? Indeed, it can – its adverse effects on your immune system will compromise the growth of your hair follicles.

If your body dedicates all resources to fighting infections and diseases, it may not leave enough nourishment for your hair follicles.

Smoking is known to compromise the body’s immune response. This weakened immunity can indirectly contribute to hair loss by making hair follicles more vulnerable to damage from environmental factors and infections your body can’t fight off.

If your scalp gets infected, your hair follicles are in grave danger. Aside from leading to inflammation and subsequent hair loss, it might even cause serious dangers due to your body’s weak immune system and ability to recover.

Premature Ageing

Do you want to look your age or even younger?

Cigarette smoking is a primary factor in causing premature ageing. It can cause your skin to sag and look older than it should.

The breakdown of collagen and elastin (which also help the skin look young) also affects your scalp. These two essential proteins also form the physical framework of your hair follicles.

You can guess that hair loss happens right away due to poor collagen and elastin production due to cigarette smoke.

The Dangerous Chemicals in Cigarette Smoke

Cigarette smoke is a toxic cocktail of over 7,000 chemicals, 69 of which are known carcinogens.

Nicotine, while relatively harmless by itself, is highly addictive and is also a vasoconstrictor that reduces blood flow to the hair follicles when ingested at high levels.

Aside from carbon monoxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are carcinogenic compounds present in cigarette smoke and have been linked to DNA damage and mutations. More importantly, they affect your hair growth by causing oxidative damage to your follicles and DNA.

Now that you know all of these, keeping your hair in good shape only requires one thing: quitting smoking for good.

How to Stop Smoking Today

We hope that if you’ve read this far you want to stop smoking. It doesn’t have to be difficult if you follow these steps below.

Go Through First-Line Solutions First

Some motivated smokers can handle cold turkey just fine and see success within a few tries, but oftentimes, smokers have strong withdrawals that can draw them back to lighting a stick.

That’s where nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products come in. These are readily available and stocked at your local pharmacy.

NRT products are the most trusted quitting option available for motivated smokers. They might not imitate cigarettes, but they contain a small dose of nicotine that may be enough to alleviate your withdrawals. These come in the form of patches and gums for easy and convenient nicotine delivery.

While NRTs can be effective, they don’t work for everyone. If these haven’t done the trick for you, you may now be eligible for a nicotine prescription to use nicotine vaping products (NVPs).

Chat to a GP

As mentioned, NRT products have worked for many successful ex-smokers. But, you might have ingrained behaviours and triggers that only something that mimics a cigarette can successfully address, such as the hand-to-mouth motion, and needing something to use while having a drink with friends.

That is where NVPs become very handy in helping you fight the urge to consume tobacco.

You need a nicotine prescription before you can purchase NVPs, so you’ll need to consult with a GP to help you on your smoking cessation journey.

And, if your GP deems it necessary, they can write you a nicotine prescription for NVPs.

You can chat to your usual GP more about this.

Visit Your Local Pharmacy

Once you have your nicotine prescription, you can pop down to your local pharmacy. Over 2,200 pharmacies across Australia hold these products in-store, but any pharmacy can order these in for you if they don’t currently stock them.

Both your pharmacist and GP can advise you on how best to use the product, such as the initial setup, and the number of puffs to take when you feel withdrawals.