Why does my chest burn while I am quitting smoking?

Question

I'm not concerned about this or anything, I am just curious. I decided to stop smoking (I have a 20-pack-year history... that is as if I had one pack everyday for the past 20 years) and today is my quit date. Already, I am feeling AWESOME! I can breathe again, but I do have a weird feeling in my chest. It's almost as if I have very bad acid reflux. I feel a burning under my sternum area. I've experienced this before when I was out of cigs for a day or so in the past, and it would always go away when I would smoke again.

Am I just feeling my body repairing itself or something? Again, I'm not medically concerned, just curious. :) I think it's kind of neat feeling my body doing all of these things to fix itself already. I can't wait to see what the next few months bring!

Answer 1

Your body is going through a lot of changes right now. It is used to having a certain level of nicotine in it, and when you quite cold turkey, that is a lot for your body to take on.

Just think--if, for 20 years, you always relied on a refrigerator to keep your food cold and someone just took it away one day, you would panic!!! Of coarse you could survive, but you would have to learn, all over again, how to use other methods to make sure your food doesn't go bad.

Same with smoking--you take away something you've always depended on and your body freaks out. It really doesn't know *what* it's missing so it goes haywire. Overproducing acid in the stomach is quite common (heartburn). It will go away after a couple days after your body has time to 'normalize.'

Congratulations on quitting btw. You will not regret it!