When you quit smoking, the benefits begin within minutes of your last cigarette. At 20 minutes after quitting: blood pressure decreases pulse rate drops body temperature of hands and feet increases. At 8 hours: carbon monoxide level in blood drops to normal oxygen level in blood increases to normal At 24 hours: chance of a heart attack decreases At 48 hours: nerve endings start regrowing ability to smell and taste improve This is the most trying time for most quitters. The first 2 days to urge to smoke will be the strongest. They say one day at a time…pfft.. more like one minute at a time. Find something else to do during that time you would be out smoking and the urge will pass. After over coming a few urges you will see that it’s not so hard to make it through that 5 or 10 minutes that time seems to stop while you have that nic fit. The first day most experience crankiness, difficulty concentrating or inability to focus, and insomnia. Working the first day seems to be very difficult. You may want to schedule your quit day for a day off. Snuggle up with a book, watch some TV, do some writing. Anything that will help you get from craving to craving without too much hassle with other people. I find when I write down the symptoms I’m having when I have a craving it focuses me on how I’m feeling and I think to myself “boy, I never want to go through this again.” This reinforces, for me, why I’m quitting in the first place. Don’t be afraid of your emotions. This time will produce some strange emotions for you. While quitting I have even felt sorry for the cigarettes. I know that sounds dumb, thinking that an object that will eventually kill you, needs some consoling itself. So I wrote my cigarettes a “Dear John” letter. I told them that I'm sorry, but it’s time for me to move on with my life. I listed my reasons I was quitting and posted that letter at my desk. Every time I want a cigarette really bad, I visualize the cigarettes moving on and finding a new boyfriend. LOL. Sounds stupid, but whatever works, huh. Something else that’s worth mentioning here I think is the fact that when you started smoking you had to learn how to smoke. Remember taking short drags and inhaling them fast so you didn’t cough on them. Then eventually taking longer more satisfying drags. Then years of smoking after dinner, in the car, when you wake up. What you need to do now is learn how to not smoke. Learn how to start your morning without a cigarette, learn how to finish dinner and not smoke, learn how to drive and not smoke. So take it a minute at a time, and understand that during this tough time you are learning how to not smoke just as you learned how to smoke so many years ago.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Aaron Snider
|
