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What daily routines help manage your IBS symptoms?

If you're suffering from IBS, you know how unpredictable flares can be. Are there any routines you've established that help off-set flares? Any routines that you tried, but didn't work? Discuss below!

  1. Living as low stress as possible, so when flares happen they are annoying and inconvenient but they don't destroy my livelihood...tho i dont expect very many ppl have that option.
    Also simply keeping a routine: sleep same time every night, eat same times everyday (ibs-d here & eating smaller meals 3x a say with snacks in between is a must!), etc.
    Keeping friends and family around me (not the fake ones!) Who understand and sympathize without pity, and have enough spine to tell me to stop and take a break so i dont overdo it (which causes flares).
    Not being afraid to say no, with complete resolve, to ppl and/or situations that cause unnecessary stress. This is another huge help!
    Spending enough time doing what I, only I, need/want to do to relax/detox from life and find that, not just stress free, but the joy in life.

    1. Well, my life is pretty quiet as I live alone in countryside and am retired so I live unusually, I think, compared to most people.
      But my routines have definitely become steadying factors. I eat twice a day except for a tiny snack in the evening. So I eat at set times. That seems to suit me best. I don't do lunch, I just have very late breakfast and dinner later.
      When I get up, the morning routines help me (unless things get VERY bad) I get my warm drink, go outside, walk around gently, look at the garden. It gives me something nice to focus on rather than getting ominous feelings about what my gut might or might not do in the next half hour.
      I think I like to pretend I am just living a normal life like I used to, when I get up.

      Some ever hopeful part of me keeps imagining a re-set button that sleep might have clicked on, like magic. For an irrational reason I can never quite shake the idea that one day I will wake up and it will have all gone away!
      (Yeah....right....but subconsciously I keep doing that.)
      Sometimes it works! My gut is fine.
      Sometimes uh-oh, being 'ordinary' didn't work, and after the bathroom call I get the shakes and feel weird, but carry on with the next little morning routines anyway (put a bit of lipstick on in case I meet anyone, tidy my hair, listen to the radio while doing that, wash the dishes and tidy things away, give the wild birds some food, check how many new seedlings of something I planted have come up.)

      Even if I don't feel well, just continuing to do those little daily ordinary things helps me to have something to hang onto somehow. Many times, things don't get worse, and I will steady out in a couple of hours.

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