Getting sick from quitting smoking?!
Question: Getting sick from quitting smoking.?
My husband gets cold like symptoms everytime he starts to quit smoking and then just ends up starting back up and the cold goes away... What is causing this.? And, any advice to help quit smoking.?Health Question & Answer
Answers:
No, he isn't sick, the coughing a sign he's healing. Your throat and airways are covered with tiny hair-like structures call cilia. In healthy people, they constantly brush specks of whatever up from your lungs and throat to your mouth, where you end up swallowing the gunk for your digestive system to deal with. In smokers the cilia are seriously weakened, due to repeated oxygen deprivation. Once a smoker quits, after a day or so the cilia begin to return to work, trying to clear up the backlog of gunk they couldn't handle before. Due to the extra volume of garbage being cleared, the body will begin to produce more mucous to trap the gunk, causing coughing, maybe even bringing up some seriously disgusting phlegm, often distressingly dark. This is all normal and a sign of improvement. Without the cilia working at full power, the body was previously unable to "take out the trash". After a few weeks, the backlog is pretty well cleared up and the coughing should let up.
No, smokers do not become "immune" to smoke. The smoke for the last cigarette after smoking for 40 years is every bit as damaging as the first one 40 years earlier. If anything, the body may be weaker from 40 years of toxics in the lungs. That said, smokers do build up a tolerance to nicotine, the addictive drug in tobacco. To get the same feeling from the nicotine, his body needs more.
Additionally, he is accustomed to the feeling of nicotine in his system. As the nicotine clears from his system, his body rings alarms in his head: "Wait, this isn't how I'm used to feeling, something must be wrong..." Rebound symptoms occur. As nicotine is a vasodialator, he'll likely get a few headaches, may feel short of breath, have trouble sleeping, etc. This is all normal, part of the body getting used to normal functioning without the drug.Health Question & Answer
No, smokers do not become "immune" to smoke. The smoke for the last cigarette after smoking for 40 years is every bit as damaging as the first one 40 years earlier. If anything, the body may be weaker from 40 years of toxics in the lungs. That said, smokers do build up a tolerance to nicotine, the addictive drug in tobacco. To get the same feeling from the nicotine, his body needs more.
Additionally, he is accustomed to the feeling of nicotine in his system. As the nicotine clears from his system, his body rings alarms in his head: "Wait, this isn't how I'm used to feeling, something must be wrong..." Rebound symptoms occur. As nicotine is a vasodialator, he'll likely get a few headaches, may feel short of breath, have trouble sleeping, etc. This is all normal, part of the body getting used to normal functioning without the drug.Health Question & Answer
People who smoke for a long time their bodies become immune to smoking. It's like people who do heroine if they stop taking it all of a sudden they get withdrawal symptoms. People who smoke their body becomes accustomed to having more carbon dioxide in their body then most. When you quit smoking you are getting more oxygen this is an imbalance and your body may produce symptoms of illnesses to show that something is out of wack. If anything i would slowly decrease the amount of cigarettes per a week. It will take time but you can not just stop cold turkey and sometimes gum and patches may not work for that reason. I hope this helped. Health Question & Answer
When someone smokes a lot, their lungs get filled with crud from the cigarettes. Just take a thin white kleenex and blow some smoke thru it, just one or two puffs. You'll see the nasty residue that is coating the inside of his lungs. When he stops smoking, it gives the lungs a chance to start expelling that nasty stuff, which is why there is coughing/ cold like symptoms. If he would hang in there until he gets thru this, it will stop and he will start feeling better.
It would be good for him to get a physical as he stops, and maybe a doc could help him with a patch or nicorette gum during the hardest part.
Some of the best success stories I know of are when people stopped cold turkey. My spouse stopped two weeks ago. A few days ago he had big cravings but they passed and he didn't get cigarettes.
So I hope your hubbie can get thru this with support.
GL! Health Question & Answer
It would be good for him to get a physical as he stops, and maybe a doc could help him with a patch or nicorette gum during the hardest part.
Some of the best success stories I know of are when people stopped cold turkey. My spouse stopped two weeks ago. A few days ago he had big cravings but they passed and he didn't get cigarettes.
So I hope your hubbie can get thru this with support.
GL! Health Question & Answer
When you first give up smoking, all the gunge that has collected in your lungs, needs to get out. If your husband can stick the coughing and cold symptoms for a couple of weeks, he will get huge benefits. Don't let him go back on the ciggies..If he can go for at least one month, he will have conquered the biggest hurdle in giving up forever. Keep encouraging him, there is nothing better than the back-up of a close partner to ensure success in the awful drawbacks when smokers are trying to give it up. Good luck....Health Question & Answer
He's having withdrawal symptoms. Smoking is bad. He should really try to quit because his chances of cancer greatly increase. Health Question & Answer
just say noHealth Question & Answer