Do You Know the Benefits of Walking? Podcast: Does COVID Cause Hair Loss? Five minutes smoking turkey time, you put out your last cigarette. How do you get through the next few hours and days, which will be among the toughest in your journey to becoming an ex-smoker?
You need practical strategies to help you survive the cravings and nicotine withdrawal, and help you break the psychological addiction to cigarettes. After you quit smoking, a lot of good things happen to your body pretty quickly. Within 20 minutes, your heart rate and blood pressure go down. In 12 hours, the carbon monoxide levels in your body go back to normal. And within a couple of weeks, your circulation improves and you’re not coughing or wheezing as often.
But some pretty unpleasant things happen right away, too. Research shows that the average smoker starts to feel the symptoms of withdrawal within an hour of putting out their last cigarette. Feelings of anxiety, sadness, and trouble concentrating can appear within the first 3 hours. It’s intense but short, though it might not feel that way at the time. Nicotine withdrawal symptoms usually peak within the first 3 days of quitting, and last for about 2 weeks. If you make it through those first weeks, it gets a little easier. You should start to make plans before you quit.
