Elimination Diet

Has anyone tried the elimination diet to control this disease?

Did it work?  I am on so many meds and I seem to be worse .

Maybe it is just a flare.  I'm having a hard time hanging on.

I think there are lots of different elimination diets. Years ago I was seeing a Chinese Medicine/Accupuncture doctor and for 8 weeks I followed his: I could only eat brown rice, steamed veggies, hard-boiled eggs, bananas, canned pineapple, pinto beans that I cooked, and a little chicken breast meat. All I drank was water. My IBS was helped by this, and I lost about 12 pounds, even though I could eat as much of this food as I wanted.

It didn't do anything for my fibro, though.

A few years back... er, several years back (I'm sure getting old!) there was lively discussion about the food plans we followed and how they helped or harmed our fibro. After everyone had chimed in and we had weighed the options the general consensus was that although starches help a bit most of us need to watch our weight and eating carbs was a primitive way to increase serotonin. For myself I prefer the SSRI meds such as prozac or zoloft because they do exactly what I need and don't throw off my blood sugars for my diabetes.

Also, there was the guiafenasen (spelled wrong, I'm sure!) protocol that had peeps eating foods that were salicylate free, along with not using soaps or shampoos or detergents that had salicylates in them... That protocol has been discounted in several double blind studies and is no longer followed by most physicians. Even so there actually are several Fibro Treatment Centers around the US that will take your money (lots of it!), make you follow the protocol and then throw their hands up and say, "You must have used a salicylate shampoo! You didn't read your labels!" when the fibro doesn't go away. These centers are often run by Doctors of Chiropractic and the way to spot them in literature is the title they use with their name. If someone calls themself "Dr. So and so" there is a pretty strong chance they are a DC. Medical doctors and osteopathic doctors who have had several more years of education and hands on training than DC guys almost always list themselves as Mary Smith, M.D. or John Watson, D.O.

A few years ago I started researching what was causing my gastric reflux and the tachycardia that followed it after eating certain foods and drinking certain things. I had to because one episode lead to a heart attack from coronary vasospasm. So I went to an allergist who had me start keeping a detailed food log and then do challenge testing. When I finally got my list of foods really the ingredients in the foods - I searched them and found out I was allergic/sensitive/intolerant to sulfites.

I stopped eating sulfited foods and my reflux went away, but no such luck with my fibro.

I take allergy shots for my seasonal allergies, mold and such, but that hasn't helped the fibro either. Neither did taking Benadryl at night for sleep.