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If it’s picture day, a wedding, a big business presentation or date night, there’s nothing more terrifying or stressful quite like zits, blemishes or acne. Whether you’re a teenager suffering through the endless cycle of body changes or you’ve recently had a lapse in your diet or fitness, acne can affect you throughout your life. Acne and other skin disorders affect millions of people everyday – some serious, some minor, but acne is always frustrating and can be embarrassing.
There are a number of factors that can contribute to acne such as poor diet or lack of exercise, but have you ever wondered what really causes acne outbreaks? Genetics or poor luck seem to be the case for most people, however there are a lot more obvious root causes for acne that you might’ve overlooked.
You’ve probably blamed a bad weekend full of junk foods for your recent acne outbreak, but what about your smoking habits? Smoking and acne aren’t necessarily two things we associate with one another yet there definitely are merits to the “smoker’s acne” myth. Does smoking weed cause acne? What kinds of impacts can smoking weed have on your battle with blemishes? Let’s peer through the haze of pop culture myths and get to the facts about smoking and acne. First we’ll define what is smoker’s acne, take a look at smoker’s skin before and after examples and finally determine whether smoking weed causes acne or not.
WHAT IS SMOKER’S ACNE?
There’s a bunch of causes of acne that aren’t related to smoking, but smoking cigarettes or weed can certainly exacerbate your skin’s issues. The majority of acne problems in young adults that persist into adulthood include:
Higher than average testosterone levels
Chronic stress disorders, anxiety or nervousness
Cosmetics
Oily hair products, skin creams or beauty products
Genetic predispositions towards skin conditions
Bacteria from contact with surfaces (pillows, bedsheets, furniture, clothing, hates, etc)
So as you can see, it’s not really true that smoking causes acne because smoking and acne have an indirect relationship to one another. Smoking doesn’t help to improve your health, assuredly, but it doesn’t directly impact your skin health, testosterone levels or pass along bacteria that can lead to acne problems.
Cannabis can, however, influence your hormones in a variety of ways – albeit, these cases are very rare and require specific circumstances to occur. Cannabis can cause hormone imbalances which can lead to worsening of some symptoms of acne. Your skin is very sensitive to the hormone balance throughout your body, so it often shows this through irritated skin, blemishes, acne or other skin conditions. In this way, smoking can cause acne or at least contribute to it in a significant way.
Your stress, depression or anxiety can also greatly impact your fight against acne. We’ll discuss this particular section on its own towards the end of this article. For now, just remember that anything that causes your chronic stress or depression to worsen will contribute to worsening acne problems too. We often don’t appreciate or understand how significantly our stress levels or emotional states can influence our health & wellbeing. The same is true for skin conditions, as stress, anxiety or depressed episodes often trigger skin irritations, make our acne flare up or lead to rashes and sores. This is why keeping your cool with supplements like CBD are so effective – not only are you put at ease, but other ailments that are associated with high-stress or anxiety can be alleviated with Cannabidiol or other hemp/cannabis products.
SMOKER’S SKIN BEFORE & AFTER
Before we get to the main reason why cannabis can be a plus or minus for your acne, let’s consider what skin conditions are saying about your health & lifestyle. If you’ve ever beheld a smoker’s skin before or after photos, you’ve probably noticed the discoloration, drying or even change in smell that comes with chronic smoking/vaping. Anyone who is considered a habitual smoker will tell you – your teeth & nails begin to yellow, your skin can change hues into more browns or sickly pale, and the elasticity or healthiness of skin can become dry and irritated.
Whether you smoke tobacco products all day or you’re lighting up joints and bowls throughout the day, the negative effects of chronic smoking habits aren’t pretty. You’re essentially clogging your skin pores or washing yourself in chemical residues from the smoke/fumes. Internally, smoking too much, too frequently can lead to organ failure, can contribute to cancers and generally serves to weaken your overall health & wellbeing.
A smoker’s skin before and after quitting smoking shows significant changes in their outward appearance, let alone major shifts in their cardiovascular health, gastrointestinal system, respiratory wellbeing and much more. Smoker’s acne, if you can call it that, isn’t necessarily something caused by smoking at all – it seems more like a worsening of symptoms of dryness, itchiness, inflammation or infections instead of being the root cause of smoker’s acne. You might say that smoking and acne are similar to other unhealthy habits many people exhibit – sugary foods/drinks, high sodium diets, excess caffeine or alcohol abuse.
Does smoking cause acne in adults and youth? The answer seems to be “NO”, but that wouldn’t be entirely true because it’s more complicated than that. Smoking and acne don’t directly relate to one another, but smoking can cause acne symptoms to get worse, persist longer or become more erratic due to smoking’s adverse effects on your health, fitness and wellbeing. If you’re a smoker of the ganja and you’re worried about how it might negatively affect your health – skin included – then there are some things you can do to avoid those horrifying smoker’s skin before and after photos. In general, these tips will help you to clear up acne, avoid skin conditions getting worse and are easy to accomplish everyday as part of your daily health routine:
Be At Peace
Meditate, practice martial arts or yoga, or just find your zen drinking a cup of tea while relaxing – the point is to reduce stress, maintain a healthy balance of mental & physical wellbeing, and avoid letting anxiety or depression to take hold of your mind & body.
Be Clean
Washing your face, body and scalp are important for a number of reasons but combating smoker’s acne is definitely a part of that long list. Skin hygiene is essential for reducing the frequency of acne outbreaks, and it helps to diminish the severity of acne symptoms if they do occur. Facial scrubs, exfoliating body washes and oil-free hair care product are just a few of the many ways in which you can defend yourself from smoker’s acne.
Be Hydrated
Hydration isn’t just essential for your internal organs, cardiovascular health and skin & muscles but it can also help you to stave off acne attacks. Stable hydration will help to keep your body free of toxins, helps to flush any harmful residual chemicals, and keeps your skin feeling soft, smooth and healthy.
Be Nourished
Eating healthy goes along the same lines as being sufficiently hydrated – the better you eat, the more likely you’ll have healthy skin because it’s getting all the nutrients it needs to keep this important organ running efficiently. Your skin is sensitive to poor diet or lack of exercise, so keep up the healthy eating, be active and you’ll set yourself up for vibrant, strong skin that is free from blemishes, zits or rashes.
HOW SMOKING WEED CAN HELP/HINDER YOUR BATTLE WITH ACNE
An interesting relationship between smoking and acne that sheds more light on smoker’s acne problems has to do with stress, anxiety and depression. As previously stated, depressed emotional states or anxiety disorders can heighten acne symptoms over prolonged stressful periods of time. People who suffer from chronic stress can also show signs of acne breakouts. This can come about due to a variety of circumstances, but stress, depression or anxiety affect your hormones in significant ways.
This is where cannabis can either help or hinder your efforts to cleanse yourself of acne problems. Cannabinoids like THC, CBD, CBN, CBG and others have been shown to positively influence the symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress and nervousness. Whether you are genetically predisposed to depression or chronic anxiety, or your poor diet and sedentary lifestyle have led to high-stress, high-anxiety conditions cannabis can be a major help in these regards.
Cannabis treatments for depression or anxiety often focus on high-CBD contents paired with little-to-no THC. Tetrahydrocannabinol certainly has its share of potential benefits for patients suffering from depression or anxiety, but THC can also heighten these conditions if you’re not careful. For instance, people who are not familiar with the effects of THC often experience moments of panic, fear or hallucinations that trigger anxiety if they get too high, too quickly. On the flip side, CBD does not have psychoactive effects and it can actually reduce the intensity of psychoactivity associated with THC. For these reasons in particular, Cannabidiol products are very popular as a treatment for depression, anxiety or chronic stress
Cannabis is very effective at lowering the symptoms of anxiety, relaxing the body and mind, reducing inflammation and easing people’s pain so naturally it can help with one of the most detrimental causes of skin conditions: stress. This has led many people to argue that “smoking doesn’t cause acne” it actually helps to reduce the symptoms of it. This can be true, but never forget that smoking anything is inherently bad for us over long periods of time. Smoking cannabis can lead to reduced symptoms of pain, swelling, stress, insomnia or nausea, but it’s not the most efficient system for delivering the beneficial compounds like THC or CBD to your system.
The best way to benefit from cannabis and avoid the potential negative effects from smoking is to ingest or absorb cannabis instead. This means no lighting up joints, blunts or vapes but instead investing in edibles, concentrates or topicals. CBD skin products like salves, oils, sprays, creams and gels are very effective at easing pain & inflammation around areas of the skin that are afflicted by acne.
CBD creams and hemp-derived seed oils were given special treatment in a couple studies. These projects looked at how certain cannabinoids like CBD, CBC or THCV helped to reduce the severity of patients’ acne by easing inflammation and lowering sebum production. Sebum is a waxy, oil-like substance that is produced by your body’s sebaceous glands. While sebum is not inherently bad for you, too much of it can clog your skin pores and lead to acne flare ups or in-grown hairs. So, CBD in particular not only eases the effects of acne but it also helps to regulate your sebum levels. Some cannabinoids actually increase your sebum production if taken in larger amounts (CBG, CBGV, etc), so try to stick to high-CBD cannabis products for acne treatments.
What is known about cannabis and its influences on skin health are just beginning to bear fruits – the more we study cannabis the more we realize how little we truly know about it. Cannabinoids can serve a variety of functions for bettering your health & fitness, just make sure you’re staying informed, being careful and monitoring how cannabis affects you every time you take it. If you can avoid smoking then you can maximize your success with cannabis, but if you prefer to inhale weed or vape then just be careful to maintain a healthy balance.
