What Smoking Does to Your Teeth, Skin and Looks

This page is general information from Health Canada, not dental or medical advice. A dentist or doctor can assess your own mouth and skin.

How does smoking affect your teeth and gums?

Health Canada calls cigarettes a major cause of periodontitis, the medical name for gum disease, and says smoking raises the risk by 85% compared with non-smokers. Both the risk and its severity rise with how much and how long someone has smoked. Early gum disease (gingivitis) makes gums red, swollen and prone to bleeding. Later stages can bring gum pain, receding gums, persistent bad breath, tooth loss and damage to the jawbone.

Staining is the effect people see first. Health Canada says tobacco chemicals can stain teeth and that smoking promotes harmful bacteria on tooth surfaces. For the wider picture of gum disease, it estimates that one-third to one-half of cases among adults are due to smoking.

How many smokers lose their teeth?

Health Canada gives these figures for Canadian adults:

Measure	Current smokers	Never smoked
Complete tooth loss	7.8%	3.6%
Root decay	29.5%	16.5%

It says smoking damages the jawbone that supports the teeth, and that this weakening is a major cause of tooth loss.

Why do gums heal slowly in people who smoke?

Nicotine reduces the body’s ability to repair damaged gums, and smoking weakens the immune response to bacterial infection. Health Canada says people who smoke are more likely than non-smokers to be re-infected after gum disease treatment, and that smoking lowers the chance the treatment works. The same weakened immune response reduces the body’s ability to heal sores and other wounds elsewhere.

What does smoking do to skin, nails and eyes?

• Skin. Chemicals in tobacco smoke can reduce blood flow to the skin, making it more prone to premature ageing, wrinkling and psoriasis.
• Fingers and nails. Smoke chemicals can stain them yellow.
• Eyes. Smoking increases the risk of cataracts, and Health Canada notes that the only treatment for cataracts is surgery.

The page does not discuss hair, so we do not either.

What improves after you quit?

Health Canada’s timeline for the mouth and skin:

1. About 1 year: the risk of gum disease starts to fall, and quitting can slow existing gum disease and improve how well treatment works.
2. Within 5 years: the risk of oral cancer starts to decrease.
3. 13 or more years: the risk of tooth loss matches that of someone who never smoked.
4. 20 or more years: oral cancer risk matches that of someone who has never smoked.
5. Any time: quitting can improve the health of skin, including colour and smoothness, and can lower the risk of cataracts and slow existing ones.

The timeline of what happens when you quit shows the changes inside the body, such as breathing and circulation. For the other end of the same story, read about smoker’s lungs, smoking and heart disease, and the shorter overview of cigarette side effects.