Day 6 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO

Saturday, Day 6
Weight: 153.6
Sleep: Yes
BM: No
Belly bloat: Yes

Today was challenging. I woke up feeling well and padded into the kitchen to make a cup of diluted coffee. But somehow coffee just didn’t appeal to me. Too harsh. So had a cup of warm water instead and sat on our sofa and watched the sun rise. About an hour later I convinced myself that I should have just a tiny bit of coffee, to avoid the slight headache I had all day yesterday. Nothing terrible, just a heavy feeling in my head. We had a busy day ahead and I didn’t want to go through it with a headache.

We had to go to visit a family member in the hospital and it would be about an hour and a half each way in the car. I packed a bottle of water and my Kindle and a sweater - hospitals are always too cold. While waiting for DH to get a haircut I downed some mineral water while listening to podcasts about fasting. I started to get a terrible back ache, radiating from my lower back. I tried sitting, standing, stretching, and nothing helped. While doing all that activity, I started feeling lightheaded and nauteaous, so I strained a cup of broth and drank it. That helped balance the electrolytes and I felt fit to travel. But in the car, the backache felt much worse and I couldn’t find a comfortable position. I distracted myself by listening to podcasts. We visited with relatives and even sat in the hospital cafe. I had an herbal tea and wasn’t at all bothered by the people eating around me. On the way home my back was somewhat better and I thought it was because we had walked the grounds of the hospital quite a bit and also I had released some gas. Maybe the backache was gas? My mineral water has a great balance of magnesium, sodium, and phosphate, but it does have bubbles. I’m going to start opening all the bottles ahead of time so they’ll lose their bubbles.

At night I had trouble getting to sleep because of the backache. I tried a hot bath and it felt better while I was in the water, but the minute I got out of the water it came back. I tried an ice back and that helped a bit. I googled tips for back pain while fasting and someone mentioned ETD (tapping). This clears the meridians in the body. I didn’t want to wake DH so I did it silently and it did seem to help. I finally found a position on my side with the ice pack on my back and was able to fall asleep.