SI Pain: 6/100 | Rib Pain: 0/100 | Concrete Back: 14/100

I was nervous waking up today.

I slept fairly well last night in spite of everything. Woke 7 or 8 times but did get some sleep and got up about 7:30am.

While I was lying in bed dozing, I was in pain with my left SI joint.

In the years previous, that kind of pain was almost guaranteed when I got out of bed.

I would struggle to walk at first and had to adopt a leg-dragging technique at the start of every day.

The usual routine would be to go downstairs, quickly have something to eat to line the stomach, then swallow some ibuprofen so that I could get on with the day.

I would get some fairly immediate relief from the pain (after 20 minutes or so) but had to take it at least three times a day for that to continue, and often it did very little more than take the edge off.

What’s interesting is that since using diet to manage my AS the vast majority of flares have been very short-lived.

Whereas before, it would be a minimum of 2 weeks for flares, typically now they last under 5 days.

And what’s really exciting is that recently, I managed to completely blitz a flare by fasting for just 48 hours.

So that is where my headspace was today.

I made a decision today to fast for at least 24 hours.

I had dinner last night and that was the last time I ate. So I will probably go through to at least Friday lunchtime or maybe Friday dinner.

Then I will be able to tell with a greater degree of certainty whether this fasting technique enables me to blitz flares. That will have been two good tests. More tests after that will strengthen any findings.

So that’s good and I feel quite uplifted at the thought of finding out one way or the other.

It is a lovely day outside; it rained a little bit, but the sun came out during my walk.

Let’s see how I get on with the hunger on day one of this fast.

Getting rid of pain is such a good motivator.