Gross, but I have to ask

[clear lungs]

At what point might I be able to look forward to not coughing up dark junk any longer? I am a few weeks into this now and I just want to make sure it's still tar and other stuff from stopping smoking (lungs healing) that I'm coughing up and not something from vaping. I have ceased from smoking a couple other times in the past and thought for sure it only lasted a few days those other times. When I started vaping, I didn't have that happen right away. It took at least a week but I am still going at it. I'm just a little concerned.

 

[Scottbee]

You're vaping a humectant now.. and frankly that changes the mix a bit. The PG or VG is also drying out your lung tissues a bit, and that can (apparently) increase the rejection of old nasty stuff that's been lying around. You don't get the exact same effect when you just "quit".

Give it a bit more time IMO....

 

[clear lungs]

Thanks Scott. I needed to make sure I shouldn't worry about something else going on. I don't have any symptoms of being ill...but we can never be too cautious. Just wondered if it took everyone so long to "recover". Maybe I should vape more VG and less PG. It's just so darned expensive though. Health Cabin has me spoiled!

 

[clear lungs]

<----- Funny, maybe I need to change my screen name for a little while longer! Seems my lungs aren't so clear yet after all! They feel like they are though. Breathing is so much easier!

 

[Pyrate]

Coughing up gross stuff is normal after stopping smoking. Your lungs are filtering the toxins that you took in from smoking. You develop the smokers cough that is actually helping your body get rid of these toxins. After cutting way down on cigarette intake or you stop smoking the cough starts cleaning up your lungs even faster. This can last up to a year depending on how long and how heavy you smoked

 

[Snarkyone]

Odd I don't know if I was the healthiest 32 yr smoker on the planet or not but I have not coughed up one ounce of anything, nothing, nada. My whole experience with these has been just about perfect barring the search for the perfect device.

 

[clear lungs]

Thanks Pyrate but as I said, I have "quit" before and knew to expect this. The other two times I quit though, the junk I was coughing up was just within the first few days and that was it. This time around, I quit smoking and started vaping on the same day (never had another analog once I started vaping) and I didn't cough anything up for quite some time. When it did start though (I think about a week after quitting analogs), it never stopped. I'm over three weeks into vaping so I just thought it was odd that I was still going through this. Scott's explanation makes sense though. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing more damage to my lungs with the PG.

 

[clear lungs]

Good for you Snarky! Trust me, it's nothing you want to go through. This is disgusting!

 

[Scottbee]

If PG was a fundamental problem I'm sure they wouldn't have put it in my Pop's ventilator when he was in the ICU. ;-)

 

[cluster]

Some good info here: About Coughing After Quitting Smoking | eHow.com

Not the most serious site but it says the same thing as medical sites, with a better pagination. As said above, the PG probably makes the process a bit different, but not necessarily all that much.

 

[Bandit]

Everyone's body will react differently.

I smoked for well over 20 years (heavily) and have hacked up absolutely nothing in the 3 months since I quit.

 

[Eric in AK]

Same here. Haven't coughed up anything at all. My lung capacity is so much greater now than 3 weeks ago, it's really wonderful. Maybe I need to step up the jogging to really put more demand on my lungs. After all the analogs I consumed in my life, I know there has to be some crap still in there waiting to come out.

 

[raddiver]

I can relate to the working the lungs theory.
I used to go scuba diving a lot. One of the things ive carried on since then is working on deep breathing exercises.
While i havent completely stopped smoking, im down from 1 1/2 packs a day down to 1-2 maybe 3.
I notice that when i force myself to do some deep breathing exercises, that will be the catalyst for the smokers cough. Not so much on the inhale (but its good to get deep breaths to fully expand the aveoli) but a long slow completely emptying exhale. Do that a few times, and it will probably force out some more stuff.

Im 3-4 weeks in now, and still have a heck of a cough.
Ive coughed up a bunch, and i feel better for it, but i know i personally have a long road ahead of me as a 25 year smoker.
-RAD

 

[dwillings]

Here's a nice little timeline I found:

20 MINUTES

• Blood pressure drops to normal
• Pulse rate drops to normal
• Body temperature of hands and feet increases to normal

8 HOURS

• Carbon monoxide level in blood drops to normal
• Oxygen level in blood increases to normal

24 HOURS

• Chance of heart attack decreases

48 HOURS

• Nerve endings start regrowing
• Ability to smell and taste is enhanced

2 WEEKS TO 3 MONTHS

• Circulation improves
• Walking becomes easier
• Lung function increases up to 30 percent

1 TO 9 MONTHS

• Coughing, sinus congestion, fatigue, and shortness of breath decrease
• Cilia regrow in lungs, increasing their ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce infection
• Body's overall energy increases

1 YEAR

• Excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker

5 YEARS

• Lung cancer death rate for an average former smoker (one pack a day) decreases by almost half
• Stroke risk is reduced to that of a non-smoker five to 15 years after quitting
• Risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, and esophagus is half that of a smoker's

10 YEARS

• Lung cancer death rate is similar to that of a non-smoker
• Precancerous cells are replaced
• Risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney, cervix, and pancreas decreases

15 YEARS

• Risk of coronary heart disease is that of a non-smoker

 

[telsie]

It's been just about 3 weeks since I quit smoking and the only coughing I did was in the first 4-5 days. Oddly, the nasty stuff wasn't coughed up from my lungs, it was coughed down from my sinuses. It was as if I had the worst sinus infection of my life and it was clearing out rapidly. I was coming off a cold that I felt might be turning into a sinus infection at the time, but the taste I got in the back of my mouth from it was unlike anything I'd ever experienced from a sinus infection (and I've had plenty of those)... it was horrible. I wonder now if that was from years of tar and other junk built up in my sinuses. Anyone else experience anything like that?

 

[enadrown]

I WISH I could cough stuff up. I am starting to believe everyone when they said those Kool's were turning my lungs into fiberglass. I still can't breathe any better than when I was smoking; hoping that changes, its been 20 days or so. Not going to give up vaping based on that; just waiting to BREATHE! We are all just happy I don't stink anymore!

 

[Rhetoric Camel]

I never coughed anything up. But yeah I never really coughed at all from quitting cigs and I smoked them from the time I was 10 to almost 26, yes I started early. Now I've been cig free for however long my banner in my sig says and I do feel a bit better but not to the extreme as others on the board have said. Maybe some are just different, maybe we didn't absorb cigarette smoke the same or something.