General warning about getting colds or the flu after quitting
All recent quitters need to be aware of two things that can happen when getting a cold or the flu near the time that they quit smoking. First, a cold may be more annoying than normal. If anyone gets a cold within a few months of a quit, it is often a really uncomfortable one.
The reason being not only are you producing excessive mucous from the infection itself, but since your cilia (see below) are still in the process of cleaning out of the built-up mucous that has been accumulated over the years and decades that never had a chance of coming out before, the amount of congestion and the symptoms can really make a person miserable.
Also, with nerve cells that have now regenerated throughout your whole respiratory tract functioning normally, you can feel pain and irritation that were dulled when you were a smoker. It may have taken you a little longer as a smoker to even know when you were getting sick.
With impaired nerve cells you may not have felt earlier symptoms, or if you did you may not have been able to differentiate what was just an effect of smoking too much or of actually having some sort of infection. With nerve cells back in place, you are likely not going to be overly tempted to smoke for the concept of pouring hot irritating smoke on an already irritated throat is generally not a pleasant thought.
Where you do have to be careful and aware is that when your cold starts to dissipate, you might get stronger than normal thoughts for cigarettes. For while you likely cut back on cigarette consumption when you were a smoker with a cold, when you started to get better you would have to make up for lost time, or more accurately, for lower than normal nicotine levels since you had instinctively cut cigarettes down to a bare minimum in those times.
This makes the first time getting well a potentially powerful trigger. Just be aware of the fact and it will help you to minimize the effect. Then know that over your lifetime, your colds will probably be less frequent, resolve quicker and be less severe as long as you always remember to Never Take Another Puff!
Joel
Related resource:
Related resource:
The above commentary explains how the healing process can cause cold like symptoms. As the cilia starts to break up and sweep out mucous, coughing and congestion can follow. On top of this there is regeneration of nerve cells that were also destroyed from the chronic abuse of smoking on the lungs and trachea. But life goes on without smoking, and people still can get infections after cessation. So while cold and flu like symptoms can often be attributed to initial cessation, there is also always the possibility that a cold or flu is also responsible. Symptoms should be treated with the same caution as you would normally exercise when you were a smoker. If long enough or severe enough, getting checked out is a prudent course to follow.
Always know the best way to help prevent such problems in the future, and even more serious lung diseases that don’t just have a short course of a week or two with a return to normal, is to keep your lung from ever being assaulted again from the thousands of chemicals, hundreds of poisons and 43 known carcinogens in tobacco smoke. The only way to stop this assault is to Never Take Another Puff!
The following video discusses the nerve regeneration issue:
