Quit smoking a year ago - sick ever since!

I quit smoking a year and a half ago.  I never smoked as much as a pack a day, but I, too, have been sick at least 10 times since.  I'm sick right now and was sick a week and a half ago.  I exercise, have a healthy diet, and don't drink alcohol but continue to get sick.  Before quitting I researched for weeks to find out how my body would react and NOTHING prepared me for this.  I would have quit anyway, but at least I would have known what I was in for. 

I know how you feel.. I quit jan26 2011...the first six months were horrible when I quit I got sick with 102 fever then after that it was hard to breath went to a pulmonist and he said I have stomach acid reflex on prilosec for that 6 weeks later still hard to breath now I have asthma so now I am on 2 inhalers !! My aniexty was crazy that was hard for me to control.. The first six months were horrible I did not feel good at all and I thought by quitting I was going to feel great !!! It does happen by my 8th month that's when I started to feel good more energy sleeping good and I actually feel alot healthier!!! You have to go through alot of sh*t but its worth it!! Don't give in to smoking that's a slow death! I am very happy I stayed quit it's the best thing I ever did!! Good luck everyone!!!

Anytime you experience stress, your body's immune system is naturally weakened as the body's energy and resources are coopted for confronting the challenge or stressor. Typical stressors are brief in nature, such as swerving your car to avoid hitting a squirrel or something like that, so the immune system shutting down for a few seconds or minutes does not devastate your health. However, chronic or enduring stress can be devastating for your immune system. People with enduring stress are more likely to get infections or to become ill. As we know, quitting smoking can be a very stressful event, if you want to increase your health defenses then your best bet when quitting is to do things to stay happy, relaxed, energized, or even preoccupied so that you aren't 'stressing' over quitting smoking. Exercise is one of the best ways to boost your immune system, but if you find that too difficult, try meditating or reading a book, anything that will maintain your attention while engaging you in a productive and meaningful way.

 

 

Its been a month for me.. all symptoms the same as everyone else listed... Insomnia sucks.. But hey, it's better than sleeping heaps no??!!

I'm starting to come right now, and ill explain how to help some of you get through it.. this being from quitting to actually getting over being sick!

Quitting is best with cold turkey, cravings last 2 days.. Chew mint gum, have one cigarette left that you can't touch (trust me it makes it easier, or you'll go buy another packet and then not want to waste what you've paid for, by having another one!), keep busy at work or clean around the house, tell yourself you don't smoke, have a glass of water when you get a craving (it tricks the brain).  The only other thing i can think of that helps, is by quitting the night before, cant try after having one in the morning.  Because you're awake, but you sleep through the first few cravings of the night time.  In saying that, after 10 hours, Carbon Dioxide is free from the body.  :)

Ok now for the beating the sickness part.  Being a Chef and studying the nutritional value of food really helps out with helping your body by dieting or staying healthy.  A simple trick is to take multivitamins, which is what i did and also was boost my vitamin c and a levels.  Vitamin A is the main one, the body may not get enough of it in an average adult diet.  This reason being, the only types of food that it is in are as follows:  Most orange fruit and veg such as Carrots, Rock Mellon, Papayas, Peaches, Apricots, Liver Pate.  Liver Pate has the highest content of vitamin a.  But one thing i found where i am in Australia, is V8 juice (tropical) has like 100% RDI of both A & C in one 1L carton.  Now the reason why vitamin a is so important because it is needed for a healthy immune system. :)  So my tip is to take multivitamins and boost these levels by eating some of these goodies in your diet!

There are so many ways to quit, so many different methods and tips people people give you.  I think you need to take it all in and choose what is best for you.  Most importantly you need to want to quit.  Or it's pointless.

So my reply is simple, boost your immune system while you're trying to quit.  Your body needs all the help it can get.!

Hope this helped.  take care :)

God please someone come and tell me that this is going to end...I am in hell...sick, anxiety, depression, and weight gain of 21 lbs and counting :( Please help :(

I hear you, please hang in there, I too was sick i had an EKG  the first day chest pains .. I am fine  I was told it was my body fighting to get healthy , I myself thing it was God helping me, because I wont go bk, mostly cause I did get so sick it took 2 years I am ok now and so very glad to be smoke free  I did this thru a group, funny thing, one guy , myself are the only ones out of 9 that still are smoke free.. neither want to be that sick .. also  we two had family members to die from smoking,, so dont give up ..  dont look at this as an  excuse ..  God bless .. YOU CAN DO THIS..:)

Thank you so much Bonnie....



The sickness I had before when I quit...it was so awful....I went to eh ER many times.



I am sick again for this quit but it is mainly the weight gain and the depression that has got me so bad.



Happy New Year to you.



God Bless.

My last smoke was December 20, 2010, I am officially a ex-smoker. My goal was to make it 1 year and I've done it. It was a rough year. Anxiety, weight gain, too many times to count getting sick and so on and so on.



The road to being an ex-smoker is not easy. You will likely have bad days, bad weeks, maybe bad months. Stick with it because it does get better.



I still have my off days, but my off days are off days that I'm NOT pouring poison into my body, and we all know that it is poison. You'll learn how to work through those bad days and the good ones are right behind them.



Good luck.

I have to say this forum is fantastic for my morale after having quit since Labor Day 2011 from smoking 10-20 cigs a day for 25 odd years. I didn't understand half of what I was feeling or experiencing this far down the quitting road until I found this web site.

My story: prior to that Labor Day, I experienced some mild pain/sensations in my upper right head region.  It was pretty constant and unnerving coming from a region of my body I don't take lightly.  Smoking only seemed to make my worrying worse, so I decided to quit. After much fretting and a CT scan later, there turned out to be nothing seriously wrong with my head, other than my doctor saying I might have some neuralgia going on.  So, he put me on Gabapentin. I wanted to see if an ear wax issue I was experiencing had anything to do with the head issue, so I had my ears cleared and a hearing test conducted. The test concluded I had high frequency loss in the right ear, and the ENT said there was a slight (about 5%) chance it could be due to a neuroma tumor.  Not something I wanted to hear (no pun intended) and not wanting to wait another 6 months to see if the hearing got worse, I had an MRI taken.  Thankfully, it was negative.

Mind you, I had some anxiety from the head issue, then I quit smoking (more anxiety), then I had the tumor scare (more anxiety).  On top of that, after I had my ears cleared, I noticed some tennitus (ear ringing) in my right ear.  Annoying!.  So, I guess I picked one helleva time to quit smoking! But, I wasn't about to go back to smoking, because I've been wanting to quit for some time, and I was committed.

By the time 2 months had transpired since I quit, I was beginning to experience insomnia (which I had never really known before), and THAT was worrisome.  I went to see my doctor about it, and it was discovered my blood pressure was high (normally it's fine). Great, another thing to be concerned about.  He took me off the Gabapentin (which didn't seem to be doing anything for my neuralgia) and put me on Beta Blockers. Truely, there was a moment I had to pull my wife aside in private and cry from all the pressure and anxiety.

My doctor prescriped sleeping pills for the insomnia; they worked for about 3 hours and sqaut after that.  I was literally living on 3, maybe 4 hours or sleep for about 2-3 weeks.  Not wanting to get addicted to the pills (they wern't working anyways), I spoke with my doctor again about just getting off the pills and giving my body a chance to reset.  I also set an appointment with a therapist about the connection between smoking, anxiety and insomnia. My doc said go for it and the therapist said I was dealing with "situation adjustment with stress and anxiety" and also said go for it.

That was the beginning, I feel, of my current recovery from smoking; taking control. As it turns out today, the sensations in my head have all but dissappeared.  As much as that one issue might have originally bothered me, it was nothing compared to all the other stuff I dealt with while also dealing with the withdraw issues of smoking - particularly the anxiety.  The quitting made everything worse, amplified the concern and worry. The ringing in my ear has subsided. In the last 2 months, I have noticed a lessening of the anxiety. The only reason I still feel it is due to the cessation from smoking. I am pushing the anxiety aside as much as possible by exercising every day, eating right, taking B12 supplements (which I heard is good for anxiety and depression) and forcing myself to do the things I enjoyed doing prior to all this hell.  I am also "re-learning" to sleep by learning better sleeping behaviors and thinking postively about sleep to help combat whatever the withdraw was doing to keep me from sleeping.  I am now experiencing between 5-7 hours of sleep a night.

Oh sure, I have dealt and have some other symptoms of withdraw; stank gas, loose stools, occasional chest pain. Between Thanksgiving and the New Year, I think I endured at least 4 colds. I gained about 10 pounds, but I wanted to, so no big deal.  I feel physically fit due to exercising, and the endorphins after cardio feel great!  In a way, with everything I was dealing with, the urge to smoke took a back seat.  A lesson to learn here, I guess, is that if you plan to quit (or are quitting), the best thing to do is take your mind of the symptoms as much as possible with positive thoughts and activities. With what God and extenuating circumstances handed me, I had not thought about the urge to smoke for months, and by the time the worry over my health dissapated, the urges to smoke all but vanished, leaving only the lingering withdraws.  As I stay vigilant and on task, hopefully those withdraws will have a near end to them as well.

Hang tough everyone.  Stay busy in your lives. Our time will come!

De Toxing when quitting smoking .. i have been unwell off and on ever since I stopped smoking a few months ago. I weaned myself off using electric cigs

I stopped smoking 7 months ago. I have never felt worse in my life. At this point my biggest concern is swelling. I had convinced myself that I must have something awful wrong with me. I started swelling after I quit and it just got worse. I read somewhere that this could be from quitting. The swelling is all over...face, arms hands, and legs. Am I alone in this or has anyone else had this problem? I can not get any answers and with the terrible anxiety I now have too I have become house bound for the most part. There seems to be a cloud of doom hanging over me. I am 60 years old and smoked for 40 or more years. I can do without the cigarettes now, but don't know how much of this I can take.

Great! keep up the good work ,so glad you didnt give in and use other problems as an excuse, you have the mind to know your body is hollering for you to clean yourself .. get well it will all be worth it .. MY story altho not as note worthy as yours is, first day they gave me an AKG.. chest pains.. nothing:) long short of it for me over a year of being sick and oh yes for me the weight :( it does get better been 6 years and i DO NOT REGRET stopping such an ugly habit.. my mom lost a her leg to the habit ,step dad, lost his tongue( throat cancer) my bro ther P A D and lost his life one year after being told 66 yra old ( he was off cigs for 10 years after 4 pks a day) DONT LET THIS BECOME YOU.. best of luck to all .. this YOU can do :)

I can totally relate to this. Five months after quitting I feel horrible constantly. Anxiety, depression, aches and pains, coughing, bad skin. It's all there! I smoked for 25years so maybe I should expect it.....

Basically I had no problems before quitting.Quit it nearly 3 months ago.Developed random body aches.
One day the tooth on the right hurts.Next day no problem.Third day the tooth on the left hurts.Fourth day no problem.Fifth day my whole left jaw and face hurt.One day my arms hurt.
I'm going crazy! I'm thinking about going back to smoking. Didn't even have a smokers cough,I think my body (and possibly yours too) can't detox the chemicals and that's why we're feeling this bad.

@jessica nice post..please people ,look at it like healing, and thats what it is!! been going on 7 well pushing that 7 some, no regrets , YES regret.. that I didnt stop sooner it was worth the 2 years of sickness .. proud of myself... stick with it so you can be proud also