Flare is worse then better then worse
Hi all,
My ibs is really affected by stress and I'm just at the end of a hugely stressful week.
I had a flair start two nights ago so yesterday I ate a really small amount, and I was still in a flare but was more stable.
Today I ate more and I'm having a bad flare again tonight
Does this happen to anyone else during a flare where it calms and gets worse again?
Mine comes and goes too, and Ive been trying to figure out how much of it is stress vs food. Ive had a few recent major stressors and flares along with them.
I hope you'll be able to figure this out soon. For me, my original trigger is mostly stress, but this then causes me to react to food, so it ends up being a mixture of both. Do you find that it helps to only eat very safe foods during stressful times? Karina (team member)
Wow so during a flare you can have good days and bad days also?
It's rare that I have flares that last days at a time.Wow, so during a flare you can have good days and bad days too? I don't usually have flares lasting this long.
For me, whenever I'm stressed, my digestive system is so much more sensitive and I have to be so careful with what I eat. While actual IBS-D flares only last a couple of hours for me, stress can absolutely cause my gut to react to absolutely everything and even make me unable to eat anything for days at a time, until the stress passes and I've had a couple of days (sometimes longer) to recover. While it lasts, I react to everything, so having symptoms slightly calm and then get worse again absolutely happens, just like what you've described. I hope you'll start feeling more normal again soon. Big hugs, Karina (team member)
Yes, a flare can last longer than one day. Or it can start as a bad flare up and then just linger a while as a kind of slightly sensitive gut for a week or two. Perhaps you introduced foods that irritated your tummy too soon?
Usually when I have a flare up I have to be very very gentle about what foods I eat, for a few days and try to eat very bland foods until things steady out more. Just beginning to come out of a bad flare up day isn't the time to re-introduce foods that might irritate your tummy, or to try to experiment with what seem to be more "healthy" options.If you take a vitamin-mineral supplement daily you won't need to worry TOO badly about having a restricted diet for a few days until your tummy settles, as that will be a small safety net for your nutrition.
I am alwats reminded of when I had a dog. If she got any upset tummy, the vet's advice was to fast with water only until the bad symptoms started to subside (usually diarrhea and/or sometimes vomiting.)
Then when she was obviously hungry, to start with small amounts of white rice only, see how that went. If all was well, then introduce plain boiled or steamed white fish or skinless chicken, and to stay on that food until the gut started to come back to normal, then gradually to re-introduce her normal foods bit by bit over the following days.Now obviously we aren't dogs, so that idea has to be adapted for us and we can probably eat some other things like bananas, toast, or some easy to digest bland food that suits us, but it's the same principle.
