Does Smoking Cause Hair Loss?

Does Smoking Cause Hair Loss?

It’s now widely accepted that there’s a correlation between smoking and hair loss.

This 2020 study did much to reinforce the link.

It looked at 500 male smokers and 500 non-smokers (between 20 and 35 years of age) for signs of male pattern baldness (androgenetic alopecia).

Two-fifths (200 out of 500) of the nonsmokers showed early signs of hair loss. In the smoking group, it was a hair-raising 425 out of 500 males.

But that’s not all.

The researchers also looked at how far along the hair loss was.

For this, they used the Hamilton-Norwood scale, the most popular scale to assess the stages of male hair loss. The higher the number, the more severe the hair loss.

Ten percent of non-smokers had reached grade 3 or 4 on the scale. Among the smokers, 47% showed grade 3 hair loss and 24% exhibited grade 4.

This isn’t the only study that has found a correlation between smoking and hair fall. A 2021 systematic review of 15 trials and one literature review provided a litany of additional studies that support the link.

But there are a few studies that found no link between the ciggie and thinning hair.

A 2003 study of almost 1400 males and a 2017 study of almost 1000 men and women found no significant link between smoking and the risk of androgenetic alopecia.

How Does Smoking Cause Hair Thinning?

A whole host of things are happening in your body when you smoke. A few of these things may lead to hair loss.

It can narrow the blood vessels

Acute and chronic smoking can cause fatty deposits to build up in your blood vessels and constrict blood flow — a process called vasoconstriction.

The problem here is that blood vessels deliver much-needed nutrients to your hair follicles. Less blood flow means fewer nutrients. Fewer nutrients means your follicles struggle to grow strong and healthy hair.

It can damage DNA in hair follicles

Smoking also makes your body produce more free radicals, which can cause oxidative stress, damage your cells’ DNA, and impair hair growth.

Oxidative stress can also cause your body to release cytokines, small proteins that promote inflammation and may scar hair follicles.

It can impair tissue regeneration

Without going into too much detail on this one, the chemicals in cigarette smoke can also create an imbalance in the enzymes you need to regenerate tissue during the hair growth cycle.

How Much Smoking Can Cause Hair Loss?

The answer to this isn’t clear. Your hair is probably safe with one social ciggie on a night out. But as soon as you ramp things up, things get a little dicier.

There are a whole lot of studies whose findings suggest that the more you smoke, the more hair you may lose.

Take this 2017 Italian study, which found that people who smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day were almost 3 times as likely to have moderate or severe hair loss.

Two other big studies out of Asia (one from Korea, the other from Taiwan) support these findings, with one study defining heavy smoking as 20 cigarettes or more per day.

What Other Effects Does Smoking Have on Hair?

Studies suggest that along with hair loss, smoking can make your hair drier and more brittle. You might also be tempting a greyer fate, with strong links found between smoking and going grey before you’re 30.

Smoking may also complicate hair transplants. Before a procedure, patients are advised to stop smoking as it can be a risk factor for necrosis after an operation.

What’s the deal with vaping and hair loss?

Vaping is such new territory that there’s hardly any research available about any of its side effects, let alone hair loss.

But we can make an educated guess about the effects of vaping on hair thanks to one key ingredient:

Nicotine.

Most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, the same drug that’s responsible for vasodilation (narrow blood vessels), among other things. So there’s a chance that vaping (when it contains nicotine) may contribute to hair loss just as smoking is believed to do.

Will Hair Loss from Smoking Grow Back?

The health benefits of quitting begin the moment you go cold turkey. Within 6 hours of your last cigarette, your blood pressure stabilises.

Within a week, you’ll have more antioxidants, which will help with the oxidative stress that’s hurting your hair follicles.

Within 3 months, blood flow will have improved, which means it can deliver the oxygen and nutrients your follicles need.

But does that have any impact on your hair?

We haven’t got any data that shows that you can reverse your hair loss after you stop smoking. 

Even after reviewing 15 trials, researchers conceded that they couldn’t find a single study that demonstrated any improvement in hair growth when people quit.

It may be that prolonged smoking damages hair follicles beyond repair, which makes the hair loss irreversible.

Or it may be because smoking accelerates a kind of hair loss you would have had eventually anyway: androgenetic alopecia (aka male pattern baldness and female pattern hair loss).

This type of hair loss is encoded in your genes and gets worse with age. Smoking just speeds the process up; if you smoke it can trigger early onset and a higher severity.

There’s no cure for androgenetic alopecia.

But there are hair loss treatments — and when you quit smoking, you give these treatments the best chance of working.

If you’re concerned about hair loss, speak with a doctor to discuss your treatment options.