"Fibromyalgia vs. Vegetarian & Raw Vegan Diets" Millions suffer from fibromyalgia, a condition characterized by months of widespread pain, as well as fatigue, sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, cloudy thinking, headaches, low back pain, and other illnesses. It has an enormous impact on the quality of life of patients who may experience a reduced capacity to carry on the activities of daily living. Everyday activity becomes more difficult, more time consuming, or simply impossible. Its cause is unknown, and there’s no effective treatment for this illness. What can we do for those who suffer? Well, according to the latest review on fibromyalgia and nutrition, a vegetarian diet could have some beneficial effects, but based on what kind of evidence? Well, back in 1991, a survey was sent to a few hundred folks suffering from various chronic pain conditions including fibromyalgia, asking if they found any success trying different diets. Some folks tried a vegetarian diet. Some folks tried a vegan diet. Some reported the various diets helped with pain, stiffness, and swelling. Vegan diets were reported to reduce disease symptoms more effectively than the vegetarian diet with rheumatoid arthritis. But what we needed was to put these diets to the test in formal studies. The first one was in ’93. Ten fibromyalgia patients were put on a vegetarian diet for three weeks. The measured levels of oxidation and inflammation and cholesterol went down – no surprise. But of interest from a clinical point of view is the positive effect of the treatment upon pain status of most of the patients. Seven out of ten felt better. They weren’t sure if it was the improved condition of the fibromyalgia patients in the course of treatment with a vegetarian diet– whether it was due to the improvement of their antioxidant status or what it was about a meat-free diet that seemed to help so much. A vegan diet was first put to the test in 2000, in Helsinki. You can tell English is not the researchers’ first language with sentences like, “Plants face heavy load of light.” The point they’re making is good though. UV light generates free radicals in their tissues. All this means is that, you know, plants must be well prepared to meet the challenges of the oxidant radical stress and contain a broad variety of antioxidants. That’s why plants don’t get sunburned and their DNA damaged hanging out all day in the sun without any sun block on. So what would happen if you had people live exclusively on plant items? In other words, what might be the effects of a strict vegan diet on the symptoms of fibromyalgia? In fact the study used a raw vegan diet. The rheumatoid patients said they felt better when they started to eat the living food diet, and the symptoms got worse when they returned back to their previous omnivorous diet. But what about the fibromyalgia patients? Both groups reported having quite a lot of pain at rest in the beginning of the study. But there’s a significant decrease in the raw vegan group, which gradually disappeared after shifting back to the omnivorous diet. They also found other significant changes, such as improvement in the quality of sleep, reduction of morning stiffness, and improvement in measures of general health. So, for example, here’s morning stiffness. The light bar represents those about to go on the raw vegan diet, and the dark bars, the omnivorous control group. They started out about the same, but after about a month and a half those eating vegan felt significantly less stiff, which continued through the end of the three-month study. And when they went back to eating their regular diet, the stiffness returned. What about pains at rest? Same thing. So significant improvements in fibromyalgia – stiffness, pain, and general health on a plant-based diet. The study only lasted three months, but it can be concluded that eating vegan has beneficial effects on fibromyalgia symptoms, at least in the short run.