Paleo Diet For Fibromyalgia?

In the past year I've probably gone through about 10 different diets that are supposed to be beneficial in helping with the symptoms of Fibromyalgia. About half of those were diets that were suggested to me before I knew I had fibromyalgia and some of them are pretty strange. My latest suggested diet is one that combines a couple of the ones from the past and it actually makes sense as to why it is effective.

As far as I've read the Paleo Diet has just a couple simple principles and I didn't realize at first how hard it would be to follow them until I tried. Basically, you don't eat anything that we as humans would not have eaten thousands of years ago. The thought is that because adaptation to food is slow in animals our bodies can't handle all the processed food that we eat along with the large amounts of sugar and salts.

This makes sense to me on a couple different levels due to the fact that many fibro sufferers are hypoglycemic like me and should stay away from grains and sugar, and because many fibromyalgia sufferers have bad reactions to MSG and even Gluten.

The Diet

Its much easier to start canceling things out of your diet then trying to figure out what you can eat. My trips to the supermarket have been frustrating but then again its also making me realize how much crap we put in our food. Even at Trader Joe's, a place that is known to be a health food store of sorts, I had a hard time finding things that fit the diet. So here is what NOT to eat:

• Sugar
• Added Salt (Apparently a little table salt is ok)
• Any Grain (So thats wheat, barley, rice..etc) 
• Corn or any corn products
• Anything processed (Has ingredients you can't pronounce)
• Juice
• Milk (I still drink small amounts of raw milk)
• Cheese, yogurt, ice cream
• Beans/legumes
• Potatoes
• Beer or any other alcohols (Tequila should be ok)

So I've been pretty much eating only salads, small amounts of nuts, small amounts of natural meats, and  a lot of veggies. So pretty much pretend that you are living in a time before machinery or that you would absolutely have to soak or cook to eat and you will start to understand what you can eat.

Does the Paleo Diet Work for Fibromyalgia?

I would say that the jury is still out on this one but the principles make a lot of sense for fibromyalgia sufferers. As I've come to understand, our bodies are now really sensitive to many different things with food being the biggest thing and that making sure you have good stuff going into your body is absolutely paramount. I've been on the diet for about 6 days now and I have not noticed anything. In fact I think I feel worse. But I also think that there is a good chance that my body is detoxing and that it will take a little while to see the affects. I will have an update in about 30 days and please leave any stories or suggestions in the comments.