Have you tried an elimination diet? If you have fibromyalgia (FMS) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS or ME/CFS), you should.
Why? Because a lot of us have food allergies or sensitivities that make our symptoms worse, or may even be the cause of many symptoms we blame on FMS or ME/CFS. In fact, undiagnosed food intolerances may even contribute to the onset of these conditions.
What is an Elimination Diet?
An elimination diet means basically eliminating all common causes of allergies, sensitivities and other food-related problems (such as celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disorder and not an allergy/sensitivity.) It takes you down to a small and very basic pallet of available foods, and you watch to see if you feel better. After awhile, you re-introduce one category and see how it makes you feel. You then keep going until you've re-introduced each type of food and gauged its impact on your health. (A symptom journal can help with this.)
It's not easy to do an elimination diet, but it can be well worth it. I'm even thinking it might be a good idea to do one every couple of years, because our sensitivities tend to change over time. In fact, I did an elimination diet 2 years ago, not long after my diagnosis, and I didn't notice any change in my symptoms. I concluded that I didn't have food sensitivities. Right now, however, I'm going through the diagnostic process for celiac disease and already have switched to a gluten-free diet because some new symptoms cropped up a couple of months ago. Fortunately (although unpleasant at the time), the symptoms were fairly sudden and severe, so I knew right away that something new was going on. Often, these kinds of symptoms come on gradually and you might not be able to distinguish them from the multitude of symptoms you already deal with every day.
Learn more: The Elimination Diet for Finding Food Sensitivities
Be sure to talk to your doctor about what you learn through the elimination diet. You may have a specific condition or intolerance that needs to be diagnosed and treated. Also, you want to make sure your food problems are part of your medical record
Have you gone through an elimination diet? What did you discover? Have food restrictions helped you? Share your experiences by leaving a comment below!
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