The number of female smokers has greatly increased in the past years (30%), which is quite worrying notably for younger generations. On the contrary, the number of male smokers is on the decrease (40%). Yet, we all know that nicotine affects the beauty, health and vitality of women.

Beauty

Tobacco considerably intensifies the skin’s sensitivity to deleterious factors such as sunrays or atmospheric pollution.

• It ages the skin owing to a lack of vessel irrigation: thickening, loss in skin tone, appearance of numerous fine lines.
• It blocks skin pores leaving a dull and lifeless complexion.
• Tars (and the 3,000 chemical substances of tobacco smoke) tend to yellow nails and fingers as well as the teeth. Hair becomes brittle.

In conclusion: tobacco makes you look unhealthy!

When you quit smoking, your skin will become suppler, fine lines and wrinkles are less visible, nails and fingers lose their yellow tinge and the same goes with the teeth once scaled and polished.

The pill

The contraceptive pill is not advisable for female smokers given the link between tobacco and numerous diseases. The pill/tobacco association increases coagulation abnormalities. The risk of myocardial infarction goes from 4 to 10. Thromboembolic diseases (phlebitis, embolism, arterial thrombosis), various cardio-vascular diseases (high blood pressure, coronaropathies), cerebro-vascular diseases, certain hepatic affections and hyperlipidemias are all more frequent in smokers.

Smoking or taking the pill: one has to choose!

Pregnancy

Nicotine dependency reduces fertility, meaning that pregnancy can be even more uncertain in women who smoke. In case of sterility, certain treatments (in vitro fertilization) will only be possible after complete smoking cessation.

If pregnancy does occur, the risks of miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy are greater in smokers. The risk of premature birth is doubled.

But what is essential to remember is that the mother’s tobacco dependency is also dangerous for the unborn child: reduction in oxygen supply by the placenta, entry of nicotine in the fetus’s blood, which can lead to growth retardation and slowed psychomotor capacities. These consequences are all the more true if the mother smokes while breastfeeding.

If the father is a smoker, the non-smoking mother is subjected to « passive smoking », just as harmful to her health, her pregnancy and her child’s cerebral development.

When a pregnant woman is smoking, her child is also smoking!

Nicotine-based patches can be used during pregnancy and breastfeeding under medical control and supervision.

Menopause

Smoking at the age of menopause entails the usual damaging effects on the heart, vessels and lungs . Yet, it also has specific actions on menopause itself:

• Menopause occurs at earlier age.
• Modification of the hepatic metabolism of hormones, which can in turn have an impact on the efficacy of hormone replacement therapy (today less prescribed owing to the fear of cancer).
• Greater risk of osteoporosis – hence of fractures in elderly subjects.