Anyone else get severe nausea from fasting?
Posted , 5 users are following.
Hi everyone,
For most of my life, I've experienced a strange symptom whenever I haven't eaten for a while.
When I need to eat (which is usually every 2-3 hours; it depends on my level of activity and how my energy was in the last thing I ate), the first sign I'm hungry is often lightheadedness or nausea rather than actual craving for food.
When I wake up in the morning, since I've been fasting overnight, I often feel very nauseous especially once I get up and start burning energy (I call this my "morning sickness"
. It's often so bad that I have to take medication to prevent me from vomiting before I can actually eat something to fix the root cause of the nausea.
In order to keep this under control I have to always carry high carb snacks with me, and avoid drinking fluids on an empty stomach because if I have "hunger nausea" and consume something that doesn't contain any energy, the nausea gets like 10 times worse. I also eat easily digestible light snacks like dry crackers as soon as my stomach feels empty, even if I know I'll have a full meal in 10-20 mins, because if I leave it any longer than that I'll get nauseous. Recently I've also discovered that if I start to feel nauseous and lightheaded, and know it's because I need food, it helps to eat a handful of salty potato crisps - I immediately feel well enough to eat a proper meal then, whereas without them I feel to sick to eat a meal. (Salt in general has helped a lot of my CFS symptoms as well).
I think this started happening around puberty, because I can't really remember it ever happening before that, but I'm not sure. I don't think this is a symptom of my CFS since I've only had CFS for about a year, but I think it might be related to all the other strangenesses of my health which play into CFS, so I'm curious if anyone else experiences something like this.
0 likes, 7 replies
charcey97 grailmoth
Posted
Hmm...I don’t have the nausea, but your question is going to make me pay closer attention to my lightheaded symptoms and my eating patterns. 🤔 I do know that I can’t have caffeine because my issues seem to be exacerbated. And salt DOES seem to help. Interesting... 🤯
paul75665 grailmoth
Posted
Very interesting and I'm wondering if this is what is happening to me. I feel quite ill most mornings, nausea and feeling lightheaded and dizzy, until I have my breakfast, and then most times my nausea starts to ease. Thing is about an hour before lunch, which is when I usually have my main meal, I start to go through it all again. After my main meal at lunchtime I generally feel a lot better for the rest of the day. I'm starting to wonder if hunger feelings are more exasperated and different since my diagnosis of CFS, almost like the CFS is changing the way I perceive hunger.
Interesting info about salt too, this is something I severely lack in my diet due to many foods causing intolerance type reactions, and now wondering if I should somehow introduce some into my diet.
grailmoth paul75665
Posted
That sounds exactly like the pattern of my nausea! I do feel that it's got worse since I've had CFS. Before I got CFS, I used to go through patches of hunger affecting me more (I particularly remember a time when I would wake up every morning violently nauseous and nearly passing out) but then it would go away again. It's more constant now.
janet71271 grailmoth
Posted
My type hypoglycemia typically occurs two to three hours after eating. Usually carbohydrate. Blood sugar very suddenly drops and makes you feel dreadful. I liked to have porridge in the afternoon and it used to happen most days after this. Same after breakfast. Lowest my blood sugar has been is 1.9mmols. which is extremely low. But for a while I have peanut butter with breakfast and afternoon porridge. It really has helped with the hypos. The protein helps utilize the carbs better so the sudden blood sugar dips hardly occur. I will feel nausea most of the time . It is yet another ME issue. Take care x
grailmoth janet71271
Posted
That sounds horrible
When I first got CFS I was nauseous all the time too, actually more so after eating, which I attributed to gastroparesis as it always seemed that food would just sit around in my stomach for 5 hours or so generating gas and making me feel sick. I don't seem to get that symptom so much now which is probably just because I've learnt to take it easy so all of my symptoms are less severe. But it can still happen if I eat something very rich - peanut butter is unfortunately one of the things that seems to disagree with me most 
I mainly eat white foods now, chicken, beans and cheese are my protein sources.
I think I should get a blood sugar monitor, it would be really interesting to see.
tracy47348 grailmoth
Posted
grailmoth
Posted
I think I figured out what this is! I have ketotic hypoglycemia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketotic_hypoglycemia
This appears to have only been reported in children, which is incredibly frustrating. (I also have another condition, precordial catch syndrome, that has only been reported in children and none of my doctors seemed to know about)