Quitting smoking, problems anyway

[Cainkane1]

I was having a physical for a new job three years ago and I almost didn't get the job. I did get hired anyway but I came close to flunking the physical and heres why. I came in the doctors office suffering what I consider a mild asthma attack.

The doctor commmented on my chest xray and he asked if I was a smoker and I said no. Then he asked if I had ever smoked and the answer was no.

My question is this. How long does it take for lungs to recover from the effect of cigarette smoking after a person quits? Do the lungs ever get to the point to where they are the same as if you had never smoked or are they damaged for life?

My stepfather quit smoking when he was 50 and he lived to be 93. He died of pneumonia and the portion of his lungs and esophagus that were effected the most was the portions of his lungs and esophagus which were most effected by cigarette smoke. I feel that had he never smoked he would have been a centenarian.

 

[Dymanic]

How long does it take for lungs to recover from the effect of cigarette smoking after a person quits? Do the lungs ever get to the point to where they are the same as if you had never smoked or are they damaged for life?

There really aren't any one-size-fits-all answers. Lung function naturally degrades over time, and while that process can be accelerated considerably by exposure to smoke, dust, chemicals, etc, it's not always easy to point to one thing and say definitively, "This is the cause of this person's troubles". It is reasonable to assume that any amount of smoking will cause some amount of damage, and that some of that damage will be irreversable. But, regardless of what type of exposure we're talking about, "will it be reversable" is not the first question I would ask. The first question I would ask is, "is it avoidable?".

 

[king catfish]

A figure I have seen many times while surfing the InterWebs is 7 years. Seven years after a smoker quits (completely), lung function generally is comparable to someone who has not smoked.

This is just a figure I have read here and there, no scientific basis; I didn't research or verify it.

 

[Cainkane1]

A figure I have seen many times while surfing the InterWebs is 7 years. Seven years after a smoker quits (completely), lung function generally is comparable to someone who has not smoked.

This is just a figure I have read here and there, no scientific basis; I didn't research or verify it.

I read ten years but like you I wouldn't be able to back it up with a website.

 

[Dymanic]

A figure I have seen many times while surfing the InterWebs is 7 years. Seven years after a smoker quits (completely), lung function generally is comparable to someone who has not smoked.

Generally, a person playing a single round of Russian roulette using one bullet in a six-chamber revolver will come away unscathed -- but you sure don't want to be one of the exceptions to that general rule. I quit smoking fifteen years ago, and my FEV1's are in the twenty percentiles.

 

[bit_pattern]

I quit smoking fifteen years ago, and my FEV1's are in the twenty percentiles.

Excuse my ignorance, but can you put that into plain English, ie. what's a FEV1 and what does a twenty percentile actually mean in real terms?

 

[Dymanic]

Excuse my ignorance, but can you put that into plain English, ie. what's a FEV1 and what does a twenty percentile actually mean in real terms?

The FEV1, or Forced Expiratory Volume in one second, is widely used as the most indicitave measure of the severity of obstructive lung disease (largely as a matter of convenience; testing overall lung function is a much more complicated business). It refers to the volume of air that can be exhaled during the first second of a maximum-effort exhalation, with the results expressed as a percentage of the "expected" value; that is, what would be expected in a person with healthy lungs at a given age, height, and gender. Thirty percent is usually regarded as the threshold of the "very severe" category.

If you're over about the age of twenty, you're going to have less lung function ten years from now than you do today whether you've quit smoking or not, although the actual amount will vary from one individual to another. If you do quit smoking, any improvement in lung function you experience will be of the nature of a reduction in the rate of decline in lung function you would otherwise have experienced.

The lungs represent a part of your body where a very large amount of your insides are exposed to the outside. At a level of fine detail, the most important structures, those which accomplish the actual gas exchange, are pretty delicate. As is the case with so many mechanisms exhibiting sophisticated engineering, protecting delicate structures from damage is usually a better strategy than allowing for them to be easily repaired, and this is the strategy evolution has adopted with regard to the lungs. Beyond a certain point, expecting those tissues to repair themselves is like expecting hamburger to turn back into a cow.