Side Effects of Quitting Smoking – What Happens to Your Body?

The Side Effects of Quitting Smoking

So you’ve finally quit smoking. You felt life would be better and your health would definitely improve; but, not only do you not feel better than you did before. You are now curious about the duration of these adverse effects and symptoms will linger.

Knowing the length of the negative effects and what you can do to prevent or minimize them can provide you with the knowledge, tools, and confidence required to permanently give up smoking.

The information you find here may save you the time and expense of doctor and/or emergency department visits, not to mention unnecessary medical testing.

What Causes Some People to Have More Severe Side Effects?
There are 3 things that produce adverse effects when you quit smoking:

1. The strength of nicotine in your cigarettes at the time when you stop smoking.

2. How long you take to detoxify from nicotine influences your body and mind’s ability to adjust.

3. How long do you work at changing your routines, behaviors, and habits while you are still smoking? (It takes 21 to 42 days to change a habit)

In the chart below, I’m going to compare the severity of the side effects of a smoker who smokes a pack a day of Marlboro cigarettes with a level of nicotine in each cigarette that is 1.1 mg of nicotine.

The technique of quitting is the key aspect that influences the severity and length of the adverse effects.

Nicotine Withdrawal: The Basics
Nicotine is a very addictive substance. The body and mind need at least 21 to 37 days to change routines & thinking and respond to changes in the body. If you quit cold turkey, you will experience more severe adverse effects on your mind and body.
The symptoms of recovery might continue for up to a year or occasionally longer, depending on the strategy that you employed to quit.

Side effects vary based on what amount of nicotine you were at when you quit, how long you took to detoxify off of the nicotine, and if you modified your behaviors and routines in the process of quitting. Not everyone gets the same symptoms.
Below are some of the most prevalent adverse effects.

Digestion Side Effects: Duration and Treatment
Acid Indigestion/Heartburn: If you had acid indigestion before you stopped, it will get a bit worse during withdrawal, and then it may go away. If you never experienced heartburn, this discomfort can continue from three weeks to three months.

Try Tums or DGL (Deglycyrrhizinated licorice), which can both assist with acid reflux. Another name for acid reflux is called Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, or GERD, which is a digestive illness that affects the lower esophageal sphincter.

Gas or Flatulence
Gas or Flatulence: This may continue for several weeks. Try to avoid eating gas-producing foods like beans, cabbage, or cauliflower. You can also try Beano.

Diarrhea

Diarrhea: This can persist for a few days while the body adjusts to the new alterations. Try any over-the-counter medication.

Quitting Smoking and Dealing With Diarrhea
Nausea
Nausea: You may get flu-like symptoms that last a week or so. Drinking lots of water or fizzy beverages should help.

Constipation
Constipation: This may last several weeks. Cigarettes act as both a diuretic and a laxative in the body thus when you take nicotine away, you may get constipated. You can take an over-the-counter medication or make a homemade laxative, which is kinder on the body.

Skin Changes: Duration and Treatment
You would expect that your skin would start to improve after you quit smoking, but no! It will improve eventually, but not immediately away.

Skin pimples: Your body is getting rid of toxins, and you may develop acne, pimples, or a rash after you cease. These will last approximately a month, and then your skin will begin to look better than it did before.

Hives: This reaction can be caused by nerves from quitting cold turkey or the fast detoxification of nicotine from the body. It should fade gone in a week or so.

Respiratory Side Effects: Duration and Treatment
Sinus Congestion: This is produced by a clearing out of the sinuses. It feels almost as if someone has turned on a miniature water hose in your head. This symptom may continue for up to two months. Take an over-the-counter medication until the dripping stops or use a neti pot to assist clean things out.

Coughing/Throat-Clearing: This is due to a cleaning-out of the reactivated cilia in the lungs. Your body is clearing out the garbage, tar, and phlegm. We can’t get a vacuum down into the lungs, so coughing up the trash is a good thing. This may extend from a few days to several months.

Phlegm: This is also due to reactivated cilia. It can last a couple of months.

Hoarseness: The throat is receiving some tender new tissue, almost like when a newborn is teething. The tissue in the throat is regenerating, a process that may last several months. Use lozenges or whatever you would use for a sore throat. Hot tea with lemon and honey can help.

Gasping for breath: The feeling that you can’t get enough breath doesn’t go away quickly after quitting. You keep trying to take deep breaths, but it feels like you can’t get enough air. This will last about a month before you begin breathing normally again. You have been so used to deep inhaling with smoking that you need to give yourself a little time to adjust.

Circulation Issues: Duration and Treatment
Dizziness: The dizziness is due to increased circulation of oxygen to the brain, and it should only last a few days until your brain gets adjusted to it. Give your body time to readjust.

Stiffness/Leg Pains: This nearly feels like those growing pains you had as a kid and is a sign of enhanced circulation. Remember, you are transforming at a cellular and muscular level. Take a hot bath, have a massage, apply some tiger balm, or just put your legs up to relax. Give yourself a break!

Tingly Fingers and Toes: This is also induced by the enhanced circulation and may last a few days to a couple of weeks.

Swelling, Bloating, and Tight Waistband: This is related to fluid retention. But still, help your body flush out the toxins by drinking a lot of water and cutting down on sodium. People tend to acquire three to seven pounds of temporary water weight when they first quit smoking. For you men, this is the closest you will ever come to feeling PMS!

Afraid of Weight Gain?

Let the habit die of neglect! Don’t substitute anything for the habit like food, candy, gum, or even non-caloric stuff like chewing on pencils. Increase your water intake and exercise!

Sleep Changes: Duration and Treatment

Insomnia: After you quit smoking, you don’t go into such a deep slumber as you did while you smoked. It nearly feels like you have been up all night. You tend to go into a lighter sleep state of rapid eye movement (REM) more often, usually every 90 minutes.

Many new non-smokers are not used to this lighter sleep and feel like they’re not sleeping properly. Your body will get acclimated to the new sleep cycle eventually but until then, you can consider a sleep aid. Calms Forte, which I have personally used and recommended to others, is relaxing and non-addictive.

Dreams: When you quit smoking, occasionally you can experience vivid dreams, maybe even horrors. Having dreams or even nightmares is a really excellent indication since it signifies that you are working out your problems rather than smoking them.

Vivid Dreams with Zyban, Wellbutrin, or Chantix: Although is usual to have highly vivid dreams after you stop smoking, I have heard that the dreams that you receive from taking these meds are more “over-the-top” and a lot more dramatic than the dreams that you may experience otherwise.

Trouble Sleeping With the Nicotine Patch?
Nicotine strains the heart and makes it beat 10,000 extra beats a day. This can influence your sleep patterns. You may be on too high of a dosage.

Contrary to what the patch manufacturers or doctors may tell you, you need to compute the nicotine level of the cigarettes you were smoking to determine what amount of patch you need to be on, and then you may need to make modifications.

There are three strengths of nicotine patches:

21 mg (patch manufacturers and doctors will ask how many packs you smoke a day: If you smoke a pack a day, they will put you on the 21 mg patch)

14 mg (if you smoke half a pack a day, they prescribe the 14 mg patch)

7 mg (for people who smoke less than half a pack a day)

Does it matter what brand you smoked? Yes. It depends on the total nicotine dose you used to utilize, not on how many cigarettes you smoked. Because every brand of cigarette has a different amount of nicotine, these generalizations might not be correct in your circumstance.

If you’re getting too much nicotine, you may have difficulties sleeping.

For example, if you used to smoke a pack of Carlton’s, that would be 20 x .1 = 2 mg of

nicotine, so you should go on the lowest patch (7 mg) and even that may be too high. Or if you used to smoke half a pack of American Spirits Ultra Lights, that would be 10 x 1.79 mg of nicotine = almost 18 mg overall, and you should definitely start out on the 14 or the 21 mg patch.

A deadly amount of nicotine is 50-80 mg, and this is why you are told not to smoke when you are on the patch: That much nicotine is very harsh on the heart and could even kill you.

Fatigue, Sleepiness, and Drowsiness: Duration and Treatment

Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, tightening your blood vessels and stressing out your heart. As a smoker, your heart had to work harder, making your heart beat 10,000 extra times a day.

When you stop smoking, your heart rate slows down, therefore slowing down your metabolism. When you are not getting the punch of nicotine, you may feel fatigued, sluggish, and lethargic.

You could feel run down, almost as if you have a cold—in fact, some people describe this feeling as the “smokers’ flu” or “quitters’ flu.” Don’t worry, this is only temporary and will only last a few weeks. After that, you will have more energy than when you smoked!

But sometimes it takes longer to get your energy back. Your body recalls running on those injections of nicotine and getting those bursts of energy. When you quit, your body needs to return to its normal rhythm and sometimes it can feel like you are more weary than ever. Listen to your body, obtain rest, and this too shall pass.

Treatment: Take cat naps, go to bed earlier, and drink fruit juice and water. If you have to drive or run heavy machinery, you can drink another cup of coffee or obtain some lozenges with caffeine in them to help keep you awake and safe.

Remember: Fatigue is the one trigger for smoking, thus it is crucial to obtain your rest.

Emotional Side Effects: Duration and Treatment
Irritability is partially caused by fluid retention, and there are two things you can do: Drink as much water as you possibly can and cut down on foods that are high in salt.

Foods that are high in sodium are soups, pickles, packaged or highly processed foods, or any food on which you can see the salt. Salt makes you retain water, and water retention makes you grumpy.

Another reason for rage and irritability is that you’re having to deal with concerns rather than retreating to smoke them, instead. You will have to find different ways of dealing with your emotions.

You’ll also need to teach folks how they are going to treat you. In the past, if you quit smoking they remarked, “Oh, you were nicer as a smoker.” Now, you have to explain why you are going to handle life in a new way rather than smoke for it. Trust me, soon it will all smooth out.

If you don’t know how to deal with your emotions, you’ll have to start seeking around for answers that resonate with you. Talking to someone who understands, reading a book, or finding other ways to express, release, or redirect your sentiments is vital now. I really liked a book called Getting in Touch with your inner bitch by Elizabeth Hilts. (Sorry boys, there is no male counterpart.)

Sore Mouth and Bleeding Gums: Duration and Treatment
When you smoked, you were literally smoking your gums and throat the way you might smoke a piece of salmon. Your gums and tissues build up a crust. When you quit smoking, that old, hard crust will slough off, and in its place, you will get new, fresh tissue—almost like when a newborn is teething.

Only around 1 out of 30 individuals who quit smoking experience a sore mouth, gums, or tongue, but if you are that one, your mouth will feel like it is on fire. A girl in one of my seminars had to have her dentures removed because there was that significant a difference in her gums from stopping smoking.

This symptom may last as long as eight weeks. In order to relieve pain, you can try a soothing rinse called Life Brand Oral Wound Cleanser, which is made in Canada (this is a generic replacement for a defunct brand I used to offer, named Amosan).

Other Side Effects
Itchiness: If you are doing a lot of scratching, it is probably only caused by increased circulation, and it will only last a few weeks.

Depression: Depression is a typical side effect of stopping smoking, in the short and long term. It may feel like grief or the way you may feel if you lost a loved one. They say that quitters go through a period of grieving in the early stages of withdrawal. If it continues, consider a herbal medication cure called Sulfonil by Thorne.

You need more than drugs to quit smoking—you need to start dealing with the underlying reasons of your emotions—but a pharmaceutical or herb can help. Since depression is also induced by water retention, cut down on salt and processed foods for a few months, start to do a little bit more exercise, and drink a lot more water.

Headache: Many quitters report headaches during withdrawal.

Excitement: Your emotions are all over the board. Give yourself some time to smooth out.

Hot Flashes: I had hot flashes after I quit. I would have smoked in the shower if I could have kept the cigarette lighted. Both men and women undergo hormone changes when they quit nicotine.

Did You Say Hot Flashes?
When you quit, you may have hot flashes: powerful surges of heat that make you sweat and color your cheeks red. They will only last a few weeks, and you can use a natural progesterone cream to help: Rub a 1/4 tsp. on a fatty portion of your body in the morning and evening.

I propose a natural, over-the-counter progesterone lotion called ProGest, created by Emerita because both men and women can use it. (It is not hormone replacement therapy or HRT.)

Note for men: Don’t worry, you won’t get breasts if you use this cream! If you have been a smoker, natural progesterone cream will also help with osteoporosis. Smoking is one of the main causes of osteoporosis.

Lela Bryan has been instructing people how to quit smoking without unpleasant side effects or gaining weight since she quit smoking in 1978. Her method is called Nicotine Solutions and it focuses on progressive improvements over 37 days (not cold
turkey).

Gradual behavioral changes

Changing Routines & Mindset

Detoxifying from nicotine gradually

Learning how to deal with stress

Lela prepared this Hubpage since not everyone has taken her program and many of you who are here have probably quit smoking cold turkey she wanted to give you some tips on how to deal with some of the negative effects of quitting cold turkey.

What about you?
Which side effects of stopping smoking are affecting you the most?
1. My major difficulties are digestive: heartburn, gas, nausea, diarrhea, constipation, etc.

2. My skin (blemishes/hives) is bugging me.

3. Respiration is the main issue: I’m having difficulties with coughing, breathing, and phlegm.

4. Circulation concerns are the worst: dizziness, leg pain, itching, tingling, and swelling.

5. The weight increase bothers me the most.

6. I’m having the most trouble sleeping: exhaustion, sleeplessness, and unsettling dreams.

7. The emotional fluctuations (depression, mood swings, impatience) are the most bothersome.

8. My mouth hurts.

9. I have a headache that won’t go away!

10. Other (please describe in the comments section below).