Nicotine usage

[slacker361]

I am starting this poll, i stopped smoking over 10 years ago, however never got off the gum. So the other day i started to use the step down patch, and my first step is cutting my nicotine usage in half. Suprisingly the second and third night I have had NO apnea events. HMMMMMM ....... I think this is interesting.

[MoneyGal]

Well, I was intrigued by the thought of nicotine in plants, so I googled. This wikipedia article on eggplant (apparently the plant with the highest concentration of nicotine) says that eating 20 lbs of eggplant = equivalent nicotine dose to smoking one cigarette. (See "health properties" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggplant )

So I'm not sure what you mean when you say that some vegetables have a "high concentration" of nicotine. I do eat eggplant and other vegetables in the nightshade family...I'd say over the course of a year I might get two or three cigarette's worth.

[SleepyRose]

I quit 4 years ago (smoking, not eggplant) using Zyban. I tried the gum but couldn't stand the taste or the texture. It wasn't as bad as I thought, I wish I had tried sooner.

My husband chewed. It was agony for him to get off the chew. Even now, 11 years later he craves. When he's around someone chewing he practically salivates.

[alnhwrd]

Just guessing, but the decrease in apneas may be because you are not sleeping as deeply because you are going through nicotine withdrawals. The more deeply you sleep, the more your muscles, including the ones in your throat, relax causing apneas. So lighter sleep can mean less relaxation of the throat muscles and less apneas. Which could mean ou aren't really sleeping better, you just have better numbers. Wait for a few days until the nicotine has cleared out of your system and your numbers should be more accurate, IMHO.

[Snorebert]

Although diagnosed with OSA many years ago, I was one who did not tolerate CPAP and went on about my life doing my best to ignore its' effects. I did have UPPP surgery at the time that gave a very modest improvement (the pain to benefit ratio was about 2500:3). I was a fairly heavy smoker 1.5-2 packs/day for 35 years.
A year ago last November, I gave quitting yet another try. I had tried patches, gum, Welbutrin, and hypnosis but this time I tried the patches again vowing to stay the course for the recommend time and dosages. A month into it, I started to feel dizzy and fatigued. I blamed the nicotine patches but kept up. When I finally finished with the patches, I was still feeling dizzy and very fatigued. I joked that I should start smoking again if cessation felt that bad.
I went to my doctor and he took me down the path of treating high blood pressure with a variety of meds. After months, I finally thought that it might be OSA. Asked the doc and he set me up with sleep studies where indeed my AHI was running 46.

I had read that smoking can make sleep apnea worse but I never heard that quitting could make it worse. I think that smoking was probably more of a coping mechanism in dealing with the effects of OSA - always up on my feet and going outside for a smoke helped keep me awake and alert.

Still a non-smoker and have been on xPAP since last October. Still suffering from effects but now that I have myself a new data-capable machine (and have found this extremely helpful and supportive forum) I am still dedicated to winning this battle.

[OCNorsk]

Just guessing, but the decrease in apneas may be because you are not sleeping as deeply because you are going through nicotine withdrawals. The more deeply you sleep, the more your muscles, including the ones in your throat, relax causing apneas. So lighter sleep can mean less relaxation of the throat muscles and less apneas. Which could mean ou aren't really sleeping better, you just have better numbers. Wait for a few days until the nicotine has cleared out of your system and your numbers should be more accurate, IMHO.

Thanks for explaining that. Someone told me about the decrease in apneas on another thread, but I didn't understand why. Now I do.

[Debjax]

I quit several times for several years at a time. Tried to quit for years after the last restart but could not do it. Tried the patch, gum, hypnosis, shots, you name it...I tried it...and could not get past the cravings.

I finally quit for good in August 2005, the day after my husband did. He quit on August 13, 2005. He had his last cigarette at 12:30, right after lunch. He did not know at the time it was his last cigarette, but he did couple of hours later, when they were hanging the nitro drip waiting for lifeflight to take him from our local ER (glorified first aid clinic) to the hospital in town. He was 45 years old with a left anterior descending artery that was 100% blocked (the widow maker, they call it)....

The day after his heart attack, I realized that if I smoked, he would, and if he smoked he would die. Threw away a brand new pack with one cigarette gone out of it (the half smoked cigarette followed it), went cold turkey and have never picked one up (or wanted one) since.

[mazsdps]

Congrats to all of you that have quit! Today is my 2nd year without cigs! I smoked for amost 20 years and finally decided to use the gum and it worked great. My dad smoked for years and it ended up giving him a bad heart. He died 13 years ago today during heart surgery so I decided to quit on the date that he died so it would be easier for me to remember the day I quit and the reason why I quit.

[azmanatheart]

Yeah, the gum, the gum. I've been chewing my teeth to stubs in the 6+ Years since I stopped giving my money to Big Tobacco and started forking it over to Big Pharma. Neither of them really wants me to quit.(Gee ya think?). Let's see, at about $.30 a piece x 20 pices a day x 365 days x 6 years= $13,000. I could finally pay down part of my AMEX bill down! I'm convinced nicotine plays a part of the cycle of cravings that goes with serotonin and other brain neuro messengers in a very complex coping and self medicating insidious pattern. Maybe an electrical inplant to shock my tongue every time it senses nicotine will cure me of the habit!

Medtronics, are you interested?

I better go to back to bed.
See ya....

[Woody3]

Well my pulmonary DR. told me that nicotine relaxes some of the throat muscles making the sleep apnea worse.
Now bear with me moment. I happened upon an article that reported that a very large precent of us with sleep
apnea have a loss of some gray matter in the brain area controlling speech and breathing and a lot of us had some
stuttering as children. Now my sleep apnea gets a lot better when I am thin. And here is a funny thing my sever
stuttering also almost goes away when I am thin if I don't use any nicotine. I haven't "quit" smoking I just haven't
lit one up in the past 9 years ... Oh! I used the patch,zyban and went to Nicotine Anonimous and could go for 3 or 4
days then back slide then I started walking every day. 2 months later I stoped the patch and zyban and still haven't
lit one up and didn't gain any weight.

[slacker361]

Good for you woody, it is the hardest thing in the world, although I have never tried heroin they say it is as hard as that to stop . I am on my first step of patch, and it is going well I am actually looking forward to stepping down to the next step, of course I am saying that now at 21mg a day, I guess the next stap is 14 mg and i am sure i will be grumpy when i start that, but i want to get off of this. The only other thing that is harder than this , is dealing with my sons autism. They sure knew what they were doing when they were getting everyone addicted to this stuff.