Day nineteen begins

I am now 36 hours and 36 minutes into a 96 hour water only fast.

My weight this morning is 242.6. This is a new low weight for 2008. My waist is 48 inches flat.

Symptom wise, I have vastly less itching than I did when I started the fast. Not none, but way, way less. I guess the itching is not simply dry skin due to cold weather. There is something else going on. There is an internal "burning" sensation to the itching as well. It feels similar to a sunburn but driven from the inside, not from the outside. It is like my skin is being injured from within my body.

Anyway, that sensation is much less.

Lesion wise, there are some interesting developments. There is a lesion on the medial aspect of my left ankle. It is almost gone. All scaling activity on this lesion has ceased. The same is true of a rather large lesion on the medial aspect of my middle toe on the same foot. I had a lot of cracked and irritated skin on both feet. This completely healed. I cannot attribute this to anything but diet and fasting.

Also, you might remember that psoriasis attacks and destroys your nails. Mine are very disfunctional. I have six completely involved toenails and I had two fingernails with activity. Note I said two. I now have one. My ring finger on my left hand had a dysfunctional nail. This was related to a biking injury in late 2005 in which I broke the metarcarpal of the pinky finger on my left hand. Psoriasis is related to either repeated injuries (which can be quite mild, like scratching) or serious injuries. When the accident happened my entire hand and lower arm on the left side became psoriatic. The left overs from that accident have been that two of my nails on that hand became quite naughty. Well, now the ring finger on the left hand has a completely normal nail again. I can see some very slight activity, but I know what to look for. The casual observer would see nothing abnormal about this nail at all. That was definitely not true a few days ago. And it is certainly not true of the pinky yet. But I can see some improvement there as well.

I also am seeing a dramatic reduction in lesion activity on the genitals and in the crotch area. I have to admit that this is very, very welcome. If there has been any reward to the denial of foods that I loved to eat, it has been the payoff of reduction in lesions in the crotch. You have no idea how excruciating it is to go around with your butt crack in a state of constant irritation, begging to be scratched, while you have to maintain your daily activities. Particularly working. I have had to go to work, and to even give presentations to fairly large groups, all the while the the thing foremost on my mind was how bad my crotch area wanted to be scratched.

Of course scratching solved nothing. It just fed the disease, making it worse. The fact that I am now scratching way, way less (due to a reduction of the internal level of irritation) is now feeding the healing process in the same way that it previously fed the disease process.

I still have flaking and scaling going on in some areas. The navel for example. The backs of my ears. But I am making progress here.

Diet wise, of course, I have had nothing but water or zero calorie clear liquids (things like decaffeinated green tea) for the past 36 hours and change. That will continue for another 2 1/2 days. I will break my fast on midnight Monday night.

Note that I am now at a new low weight. I have moved beyond the little plateau I was on in the past week. Great!

My plans today are to attend a Bikram yoga class this morning. Yes, I know. Dr. F. does not recommend hot yoga while fasting. I respectfully disagree. He is afraid of damage to the kidneys. However, this class is not that hot. It is around 100 degrees. I regularly go into saunas at 180 degrees. This is basically like standing in the sun on a Florida day. I think I can certainly do that while fasting. In any event, my kidney function is excellent, and I am hydrating to beat the band. I probably consumed over a gallon of purified water yesterday, and I will do that again today. I am going very often with great healthy activity down there. And I will certainly hydrate heavily during the class.

The Bikram class as I have said before is terrific for the skin. Everything scales off and the irritation settles down. Granted the effect is temporary, and I am not claiming that it will cure psoriasis. But I suspect it speeds up the process of detox. I probably sweat a couple of quarts at least during this class. I saturate one bath towel completely. It is great for your skin to sweat when you have psoriasis. That's for damn sure.

I will also relax, read The China Study, and be with my daughter, Jeanae. She is going through some tough times and she needs me this weekend.

More later.