SI Pain: 22/100 | Rib Pain: 0/100 | Concrete Back: 9/100

Today is the first day I’m potentially coming out of flare!

I had an awareness of my left SI joint this morning, but it was less than 9 out of 100 first thing.

There’s no other pain anywhere else and I slept pretty well last night on the whole. Woke up maybe 6 times, but it wasn’t a searing pain, more slight discomfort and lots of tossing and turning.

The main thing was that I couldn’t feel pain in my back when I lay in bed this morning.

That’s something I haven’t had for a few days now and feels like a really big win.

So I have brought myself out of this flare through fasting.

I’m almost nervous about saying it out loud in case it suddenly reverses, but it is thrilling realisation.

It means now have something else in my tool kit if I’m in pain with the AS.

I thought fasting would have been one of the hardest things to do on this diet, but actually, it has been weirdly easy. I normally get stressed and hangry if I haven’t eaten, but this time I didn’t. I think it must be because I planned to do it because I just didn’t feel any hunger at all.

More than that, I felt quite energetic and even sprightly with it.

So that’s my morning update. I am now walking to work and I’m aware of my joints, but it’s not painful.

I’ve made a decision not to have lunch today. I just would rather get 100% better than 90% better and risk triggering a flare again.

I’ve come this far and want to completely flush out the system.

I got a coffee on the way to work and noticed something interesting. At about 9:45am I felt some elevated anxiety as if I might be a little bit emotional today. I realised it was probably the caffeine rush. A few minutes later, I had a wash of energy again and felt tiniest bit light-headed.

With it came a slight tingly sensation. It was somewhere between ASMR and the feeling you get after cold exposure (after an ice pool) at Banya. It’s hard to describe. A bit like tiny, happy bubbles popping. It felt healthy and cleansing.

I felt fine not having lunch today, and my stomach didn’t really rumble, so that was good. I considered briefly that maybe I should keep it going even longer, until tomorrow.

Then less good…

I had felt pretty good all day but when I left the office at about 5.45pm I just didn’t feel great.

It wasn’t so much pain, more of an the awareness on the joints of every step. I just felt a bit fed up because I thought it had gone. I wanted to go straight home and so instead of doing my usual longer walk to a further away station, I went to the closer one.

My brain was a bit fuzzy. I messed up getting off at my stop, then it took me ages to get home, and my knee was hurting a bit.

So today has been a mixed bag.

It was almost a magical experience, but at the same time, it was so effective I think I wanted more. That might sound a bit weird, but I just hoped that it would be a complete flushing out and maybe if I had done another day of fasting it would have.

There are some people who do 3 or 4 days, which seems like a lot but no I know I could do it if I had to.

My partner was out a bit later this evening, so I knew we wouldn’t have dinner together until later. This was going to be my first meal in over 2 days and I didn’t want to have to wait, so I ended up having a few pickled gherkins and some natural pork scratchings.

This was a mistake. I’ve had some ups and downs with pork scratchings on the diet and I shouldn’t have risked it. Dinner was broccoli and venison which is safe (for me). I also had one of my ‘compliant’ starch free cookies as well, which was probably a tad risky.

Either way, I went to bed feeling kind of fine but not 100% and the pain hit 22 just before going to bed. The pork scratchings or the starch free cookie, or maybe just stopping the fast too soon today has triggered something.

So it’s been a really good and powerful experiment, and it has been a success. But I am also not climbing up the walls with happiness just yet.