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Coughing in the morning after not having had a cigarette in hours?

(3 posts)
  1. Diamond
    Member

    Okay, yes I smoke. (I am not really looking for any opinions from people telling me how bad smoking is b/c I know).

    On to my question...

    I smoke about a pack a day (down from 2 packs a day). I am trying to gradually quit smoking. However, I have noticed lately, when I wake up in the morning I start coughing really bad. It is like I can't take a deep breath w/out coughing.

    It seems, however, that after I have a cigarette in the morning, the coughing immediately goes away. I don't understand this b/c this nasty smoke is what is polluting my lungs...so why does it help my cough?

    I don't cough throughout the day, only when I wake up in the morning (after not having had a cigarette in 6 or 7 hours) On days when I sleep longer (8 to 10 hours) the coughing is even worse. This is what leads me to having another cigarette when I wake up b/c it stops the coughing. Of course that then leads to me having another one and another one, etc.

    I am confused b/c I thought my body would be happy w/out having a cigarette for that long?

    Posted 1 year ago #
  2. galensgranny
    Member

    Probably the mucous your body makes to line your throat to help protect it from the smoke sort of "pools up" when you are lying down for hours, so when you get up, you cough it up. Once you finished coughing up that mucous, there isn't any more to cough up. So whether you had a cigarette or not after coughing, it would all be the same.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  3. I'm not a Dr but I am a nurse it sounds like you have the first stages of this:

    Emphysema and Smoking

    Emphysema is a chronic lung disease involving damage to the lungs air sacs which effects breathing. There is progressive destruction of alveoli and the surrounding lung tissues. With advanced emphysems the large air cysts develop where normal lung tissue used to be. Air is trapped in the lungs due to a lack of supportive tissue, which in-turn decreases blood oxygenation.

    Unlike asthma, which occurs when the muscles in your airways tighten, emphysema causes a loss of elasticity in the walls of the small air sacs in your lungs. Eventually, the walls stretch and break, creating larger, less efficient lung air sacs that aren't able to handle the normal exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

    When emphysema is advanced, you must work so hard to expel air from your lungs that breathing becomes difficult and breathing can consume as much as 20 percent or more of your resting energy, next is the Oxygen tank, 24/ 7. Unfortunately, because emphysema develops gradually over many years, you may not experience typical emphysema symptoms such as shortness of breath until irreversible lung damage has already occurred. Instead of an emphsema cure, emphysema treatment focuses more on relieving emphysema symptoms and avoiding serious complications.

    Signs and symptoms

    The main symptoms of emphysema are shortness of breath, early morning coughing, breathing difficulty and reduced capacity for physical activity, both of which are likely to become worse as the disease progresses. In time, you may have trouble breathing even when lying down, and it may be especially hard to breathe during and after respiratory infections, such as the common cold, or the flu.

    Other signs and symptoms of emphysema include:

    Mild cough or chronic cough. You may produce mucus or phlegm when you cough hard.
    Loss of appetite and weight loss. It's a vicious cycle.

    Fatigue. You're likely to feel tired both because it's more difficult to breathe and because your body is getting less oxygen than it needs.
    When you inhale, air travels to your lungs through two major airways called bronchi. Inside your lungs, the bronchi subdivide like the roots of a tree into a million smaller airways (bronchioles) that finally end in clusters of tiny air sacs (alveoli). You have about 300 million air sacs in each lung. Within the walls of the air sacs are tiny blood vessels (capillaries) where oxygen is added to your blood and carbon dioxide — a waste product of metabolism — is removed. The air sac walls also contain elastic fibers that help them expand and contract like small balloons when you breathe.

    Effects of emphysema - What happens?
    Death, if you continue to smoke, and I'm not
    trying to be rude, just honest.

    Best of luck

    Posted 1 year ago #

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