Hello! I was just diagnosed with Fibro last week. Ive had symptoms for a few years...but after my 3rd child was born in Feb 2004 I have been getting progressively worse. After she was born, my family went vegan. I was eating a high carb very low fat diet. Ive only dropped 10 lbs since she was born. After having my 2nd child, I was eating low carb, and was able to exercise daily and do heavy weight lifting, I was beginning to train to compete in fitness when I got pregnant with my 3rd. At that time when I was working out and eating low carb I felt amazing....no brain fog...just a few off days and that was it. I really wonder if eating a high carb very low fat vegan diet really aggravated my fibro?? My chiro told me I really need to go back to that diet. Ive been eating some meat, but only clean pasture fed,free range meat. My brain fog has lifted a bit. I also have developed hypglycemia. What do you think?? HAs a low carb diet helped you with your fibro???

Going low carb defintitely helped me with the low carb symptoms...especially getting off grains. Some people suspect FM may be a gluten intolerance thing. After being grain free for months, I ate one pancake and could track the results for a week. First, energy plunged, and a headache, the second day, muscles aches, and after the third or fourth day, joint pain. Then it all gradually eased up. I have had bites of higher carb things (sugar, potatoes, rice) and not had that huge of a reaction. Something to consider, I think.~Gail

No doubt about it. I was never formally diagnosed with FM but have had all the symptoms for years. Fatigue, detached like mental state, body aches, flu like feeling. Antidepressants never did any good. I used to live on Excedrin for the body aches and caffeine to keep me awake.

Most of it went away when I started low carbing. The final help was starting a diabetes drug, byetta, which completely got rid of the fatigue. (i'm diabetic)

I really feel that FM is aggravated by inablity to process carbs. Some of us get to be full blown diabetics, some only stay in that pre-diabetic/insulin resistant condition. Either way, if you correct that, by diet or medications, your symptoms will improve.

ditto...

Back a few years ago, before I discovered I had FM, I had a girlfriend that would always ask me what my "pain du jour" was.

I used to feel guilty because I thought I was just being a big baby; I sure was glad when I found out I really was feeling pain that other people just don't deal with... and I was feeling it every day...and it could be different every day depending on what I had done the day before.

I definitely believe it is a grain issue...and it's not even how much you eat of it although I would feel worse the more I ate...it's that you eat it every day. Even if I didn't eat bread per se', I might would eat ceral, or birthday cake, or popcorn, or even drink a beer. It takes 3-5 days to get something out of your system and even longer to get out the side effects. I guess I realized about six weeks in that I was not having daily pain anymore.

So, yes, grain is the culprit for me, not just for the pain but for the weight and fogginess too. It got so bad several of my family members feared I was already showing signs of Alzheimer's. And I'm not even 50 yet! But that is how bad my memory got and how foggy I was all the time.

And being allergic to food is different than being sensitive to other things...it's more like a drug...you feel so happy when your eating the bad stuff and then as little as 20 minutes later I would start suffering...only to eat more again later.

You can do a grain free diet without going low carb. I do low carb, modified, but I still only eat organic, whole foods...free range chickens and eggs...buffalo or grass fed beef with no antib's etc., etc..

I'm not going to say it's easy to get grain out of your diet, but it may be the best first thing if you're not sure you want to go completely low carb.

My sister is also bothered by grains...but she wasn't bothered until just recently...and she has learned to exchange rice for the grains. So she hasn't lost any weight and that's not why she's doing it...she just feels 100% better.

If you're doing a grain free, or wheat free diet, you might want to look at the list of foods to avoid from the Celiac groups. Its not just food, its even vitamins! Sunshine24 kept getting sick, and found it she's a celiac and even though she wasn't eating grain, she was getting it as gluten from her vitamins. Its insidious stuff!

Eating low carb hasn't really helped me a lot with fibro. But it has taken weight off that would otherwise aggravate it.
I know I would really like to increase my exercise but don't want that to aggravate it, and neither do I want to do it on fibro's schedule.
I know I need my meds updated this month---maybe that will help.