nasty.... ur not kidding. im thinking positively right now that the vits will put me in a much better place..... and yes im aware of hypothyroidism as ppl wtih fibro and cfids often are hypo. last time i was tested the dr thought i might be but the tests said no way. if this doesnt work i maybe back at the dr again. just hate to go there if i dont need to. the more stuff they have in ur chart the more likely it is for u to get booted by ur medical insurance or they raise the rates to something u cant afford. good luck getting insurance aftert that. so goes it with the im self employed and self insured world. there is no one that will stand up for u.
exhaustion
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Dinky, I had similar problems as you do. I quit for about 6 months using the e-cig (relapsed terribly for the usual reasons), but during that time I had long coma-like naps, combined with virtually no energy, and an inability to sleep at night. Plus, my tendency to have itchy skin got much, much worse. I hesitate to offer any advice, given your medical history, but I figure this may help give you a different way of looking at it.
My pet theory is that when you quit smoking, there are many things going on. You are healing, you are purging yourself of some pretty nasty chemicals, and both your body and mind have become totally dependent on cigs, for a wide variety of reasons. This combination, while healthy, is also very stressful. It took me a long time of experimenting before I found the culprits.
I think that as your body goes through these changes, it becomes hyper-sensitive to things that either were there all the time, or were masked by the cigarettes themselves. I discovered three things.
First and foremost, I don't tolerate wheat (or other gluten bearing grains) very well at all. This never bothered me when smoking, but now it is pretty hard for me to ignore. If I eat wheat, I will be tired for the rest of the day, and will usually fall into a deep nap at some point. If I don't eat wheat, I will have a ridiculous amount of energy. I think this gluten intolerance got worse during my smoking years, but was masked by the self-medicating effects of cigarettes (I still eat wheat, but do so only occasionally, and when I know that I can afford to be tired).
Second, I have a similar, but less pronounced, problem with dairy. Milk and heavy cheeses in particular.
Third, my body craves low intensity exercise, such as walking. When I was smoking, I would lift weights and actually do a fair amount of medium intensity exercise, at least as much as my lungs could handle. But with vaping, I need to walk and keep moving. BTW and FWIW, there are a lot of body builder/weight lifter type of trainers who think that low intensity exercise is far more important than medium intensity exercise.
Finally (I guess there were four things after all), my allergies got much worse. I cannot tolerate much in terms of mold or dust anymore. A HEPA air filter has helped enormously in this regard.
I hope you find your answers. And good luck.
My pet theory is that when you quit smoking, there are many things going on. You are healing, you are purging yourself of some pretty nasty chemicals, and both your body and mind have become totally dependent on cigs, for a wide variety of reasons. This combination, while healthy, is also very stressful. It took me a long time of experimenting before I found the culprits.
I think that as your body goes through these changes, it becomes hyper-sensitive to things that either were there all the time, or were masked by the cigarettes themselves. I discovered three things.
First and foremost, I don't tolerate wheat (or other gluten bearing grains) very well at all. This never bothered me when smoking, but now it is pretty hard for me to ignore. If I eat wheat, I will be tired for the rest of the day, and will usually fall into a deep nap at some point. If I don't eat wheat, I will have a ridiculous amount of energy. I think this gluten intolerance got worse during my smoking years, but was masked by the self-medicating effects of cigarettes (I still eat wheat, but do so only occasionally, and when I know that I can afford to be tired).
Second, I have a similar, but less pronounced, problem with dairy. Milk and heavy cheeses in particular.
Third, my body craves low intensity exercise, such as walking. When I was smoking, I would lift weights and actually do a fair amount of medium intensity exercise, at least as much as my lungs could handle. But with vaping, I need to walk and keep moving. BTW and FWIW, there are a lot of body builder/weight lifter type of trainers who think that low intensity exercise is far more important than medium intensity exercise.
Finally (I guess there were four things after all), my allergies got much worse. I cannot tolerate much in terms of mold or dust anymore. A HEPA air filter has helped enormously in this regard.
I hope you find your answers. And good luck.
fibro ppl have this a mono style exhaustion all the time. so yeah i hear u..... this is critical exhaustion. its even worse than the mono exhaustion. i dont even know how to explain it. but yes i get u. congrats u made ur 1st post. :}}
yes i hear u on the gluten and the heightened sensitivity to mold and dust and such. i have that problem now too. taking allergy shots every week to combat that. also have the hepas. its a combo of a lot of things with me now. its the fibro and the withdrawl from what ever else is addictive in smokes as well as fighting a fungal pneumonia that i got 8 1/2 months ago. be careful. mulch isnt just mulch. found out the hard way. im still not totally better but not dying anymore. put the whole mess together and its no wonder im so darn tired. i thought quitting would help the situation and im sure it has. however i didnt bargain for the withdrawl from other addictive chemicals what ever they might be. that has further weakened me at this point and im sure has a lot to do with my full blown exhaustion. i will give the vits a chance to help me out here. hopefully what ever addictive nasty that is in my body is washing itself out too and i will be feeling a lot better..... hopefully sooner than later.
One other little thing. I would also supplement vitamin d3. I am not sure that other supplements are necessary, and I would be cautious about them. But vitamin d is almost impossible to get enough of through diet and sunlight (unless you have an outdoor job and live in Florida, or if you eat nothing but salmon). While we can live with less than an optimal amount, it makes us much more susceptible to illness, fatigue, and also cancer. The USDA recommendations are almost criminally low, and only really are enough to prevent rickets. I would go with at least 1000 IU daily, and that would be a bare minimum. Personally, I use 10000 IU/day, and my tested levels are still below optimal, and I have been taking that amount for over a year.
I really want to reply to a few comment and tell you a few things I found out, but I'm just dead exhausted today and I took a major stress hit, so all I want to do right now is go to bed. I'm having to venture out tomorrow to do a couple of things and I'm just dreading it. I'll be back tomorrow 
Try not to let the depression get you, I had to not only increase my SSRI but due to what ever chemical(s) it was I had to go to a SNRI which I found rather interesting. There is something else I want to know if your experiencing, I'll PM it
Try not to let the depression get you, I had to not only increase my SSRI but due to what ever chemical(s) it was I had to go to a SNRI which I found rather interesting. There is something else I want to know if your experiencing, I'll PM it wow thats a lot. yeah i heard d 3 helps too. may add that to the regiment once ive got all of what the pharmacist suggested in place for a few days. right now im still extremely tired. im getting very little done. my job is suffering and im sleeping way too much. something has to give. waiting on my 24 nic to come in. hopefully it will arrive tomorrow. id like to see how things go over the weekend when my work schedule is a bit lighter. work needs me at my best and after 8 1/2 months of being very sick i need to get back on track as far as cleaning my house and other things. have classes to take and the like. couldnt focus if i wanted to. so im praying that between the 24 nic and the vits i will be a lot better very soon and i will be able to stay awake and focus.
sorry ur having it rough dark angel. yeah stressors really seem to be adding to the fun right now. i got hit with a couple of biggies yesterday and i tanked. just goes to show how much our bodies are fighting to rid themselves of all of the crap and heal. also shows at least i think it does that there is a lot of withdrawl to something in coffin nails and we dont even know exactly what all it is..... very frustrating but we will make it. we will survive and we will be better off for it in the long run. id just like to know how long the long run is. lol would someone give me the end date to all of this. everything else has a deadline why not that... hehe
Personally i have not had this problem, but I DID loose my appetite, which was shocking as I thought I'd be eating MORE.
im on again and off again on the eating too. i have some wierd food cravings,,,,,, primarily for a lot of junk food. not good. suspect those will pass with time. forget to eat and then all of the sudden i remember i havent eatten today. boy im hungry. one day i eat well and the next i could care less. not sure whats up with that.....
Someone else has mentioned this and I will reiterate: you really should be tested for lyme. It often masquerades as fibro, chronic fatigue, even MS. You are certainly in the right area. The typical first test is the ELISA; it's so woefully wrong so often that you should skip it and have a good western blot done at a lab like IGeneX, which tests all the bands (other labs omit the most highly specific bands, presumably just in case you had the vaccine). I know because I had lyme and also babesia (another tickborne illness). I was so tired for so long. I could not keep my eyes open to drive. I don't know how I didn't kill myself. Treatment was many months long, I had a PICC line and intravenous ceftriaxone along with a host of anti-malarials for the babesia. I'm back to something close to normal now, many misdiagnoses later. Neurologist first dx'd MS, refusing to test me even though I had a bite and a rash -- claimed there were no ticks around here.
Anyway, anyone with a debilitating illness like that should just as a matter of prudence rule it out. And a doctor giving you the next-to-worthless ELISA test does NOT rule it out. (My ELISA was negative and my western blot was CDC positive.)
I would find a lyme literate doctor.
Don't give up.
Anyway, anyone with a debilitating illness like that should just as a matter of prudence rule it out. And a doctor giving you the next-to-worthless ELISA test does NOT rule it out. (My ELISA was negative and my western blot was CDC positive.)
I would find a lyme literate doctor.
Don't give up.
wow michelle u went thru a lot. yes on the cfids too but most ppl dont acknowledge it anymore than they used to pay attn to fibro. we were all just nut cases. slowly but surely the med community decided there is something called fibro. not sure they are admitting cfids as of yet. at least im not a nut case anymore. lol all of these illnesses mimic each other so closely i can see how a mis diagnosis could happen. i was tested for ms. dr was sure i had it. went to great extremes to make sure on that one. i dont remember being tested for lymes. may have been. just dont remember. brain rot. when i go in to see him i will ask him if he tested for lymes and if so which test he used.
did u ever get over ur lymes etc or can u get over it. guess im not as well versed in that as i am in the fibro cfids world.
did u ever get over ur lymes etc or can u get over it. guess im not as well versed in that as i am in the fibro cfids world.
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Hey Dinky. I totally concur on the B-12 vitamins. I know how working a stressful job can be, especially if you work it 80-100 hours a week. I'm a chef and I put in about the same hours and it's very stressful. Another chef I worked with once gave me some B vitamins before dinner service on a really busy night and I was hooked. Instant energy and focus. I've also read that one of the problems that comes up when you quit smoking is a vitamin B deficiency. You're body basically uses the vitamin B to repair the damage done by smoking. At least that is what I read. It might be beneficial to take a B complex vitamin that has all of the B vitamins, not just B-12. It can't hurt. B vitamins are water soluble so you can't OD on them, you just pee out what your body can't use. It turns your pee neon yellow too, which is a cool benefit! Good luck. I hope you get back on your feet soon.
Dinky,Dark Angel,Michelle, Im a fibro/myofacial pain patient,too which may be part of this extreme tiredness syndrome. Just finished my second huge nap n still tired. Reading a lot of good stuff in this thread. New to forum, hope that ur fatigue resolved itself,as I'd like to see light at the end of this tunnel. seems like so many positive things other people can handle easily throw fibromites for a loop! To be honest, I usually give one day a week up to the fibrogods and just sleep anyway buy I had high hopes on vaping to cut the fatigue not add to it. I do work 40 hrs Im 61, normal body wght not any other chronic stuff going on.
maybe we can all get together n work this out...
maybe we can all get together n work this out...
Yes I have noticed the appetite issue BUT I had the problem way before quitting analogs, I think it's a different fibro or medication in my case, I just ate today after I realized it had been 3 days and all I have had was some french bread. It is very hard to know what effect the cessation of those 4000 enigmatic chemicals will have on your body when you suffer from fibro. IMHO fibro is a disease that can debilitate you all on it's own, the medical community has no real ideal about it, so we are battling blind!
agree dark angel. thats part of the fun. u never know whats coming next with fibro and the medical community has stuck a pain med out there and not much more. hey fine.... but i really dont like the laundry list of side effects that go with that. it also leads ppl to believe that pain is the only thing we are dealing with. i wish. this exhaustion was not something i expected. i thought my body would be happy that i quit feeding it crap and would react positively. instead i went somewhere i havent been in quite a while. not that i dont get tired and over do and pay but this reminded me of when i used to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. very scary.
i so can relate chiwalker. thats the scary part of this fibro stuff. never know whats going to take a large chunk out of u and why. i often give up a day to the fibrogods too. sleep and sleep. just wish that i felt better once i finally come back to life.... what ever that is.... sometimes its even worse. i dont have any other chronic issues either. my fatigue has not resolved yet. but i will tell u that the pharamcists suggestion to double up on some vitamins and to add the b-12 and some extra c does seem to be helping a bit. at least im not a total zombie today. im hoping if i continue to do this that i will continue to improve. im with u on the high hopes that vaping would help improve my well being when it came to the fibro. i didnt even think that i might get worse before i got better lol. but hey thats fibro for u..... my mistake lol..... getting together would be fine. just figure out where .....
wow didnt know that quitting the death sticks would wipe out b vits. why is that. good to know i cant overdose on them.... oi can only imagine what its like to have a busy dinner crowd waiting for food and they all want it now and they want it hot. sounds like a lot of stress..... no fun. i sympathize. now im really going to make sure i stick with hittint the b's
had the same non traditional reaction to antidepressants(which they seem to dispense like halloween candy to fibro people...god knows why...)one made me gain 60 lbs n I got even more depressed. I take an antianxiety for panic attacks n soma for muscle pain is all...lots of vites n supplements. Tried 5htp which was amzing for my hubby...no go just fogged my mind. bottom line is guess we re wired differently than most. One thing I think i see running strongly thru all our posts...we are so damn hard on ourselves! do we feel we have to overcompensate for not being"normal"?
I don't think it's smoking related at all. have you had your vitamin D levels checked? I went through hell & back with a vit D deficiency, it took 8 months to diagnose. fatigue was on top of the list...and pain all over..given your location, please ask for a D blood test. They tried DXing me as fibro, I refused & kept digging, the D was my answer.
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