Fibromyalgia and Living Gluten Free
by Julia Wisniewski
If you have been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, you probably went through a few basic steps.
You may have gotten blood drawn and found that there was no conclusive evidence of an illness causing your symptoms.
Your symptoms could include chronic fatigue, joint pain, muscle aches, cloudy thinking, sleep disturbance, depression and the list goes on and on.
After your doctors have ruled out all other options, you are left with a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia.
Next, you were offered a variety of treatments, including, but not limited to antidepressants, anti-seizure drugs, analgesics and therapy.
Some or all of these options may have worked for you. Maybe none of them did.
If you’ve found yourself in the latter situation, there are more options that are not mentioned on many Fibromyalgia websites.
In fact, gluten-free living is almost completely absent from many major Fibromyalgia websites.
However, if you look deeper into forums written by people experiencing the illness, you will see that going gluten free can help many people experiencing chronic pain and fatigue.
In fact, the Mayo Clinic has researched the connection between gluten and fibromyalgia. It seems that the connection between the two is being researched everywhere, including the autoimmunity research foundation.
The symptoms associated with FM have a very large overlap with symptoms of people who have a gluten allergy or Celiac Disease.
People dealing with both illnesses often feel tired and have trouble digesting food that is similar to Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
The reason that going gluten free often helps Fibromyalgia patients is a phenomenon called central sensitization.
This is when the central nervous system reacts to a certain stimulus. The stimulus can be certain types of food like gluten or even dairy and the reaction is often pain.
If you find yourself diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, talk to your doctor about the option of going gluten free (if they don’t offer that up as a solution first).
Have her or him help you slowly wean gluten out of your diet. Many find that the hardest part of going gluten free is giving up full-flavored wheat bread.
But you don’t have to settle for less-satisfying bread in order to maintain yourself. There are many great breads available now and even bread machines specifically for making gluten-free bread.
Remember, working with your Fibromyalgia is manageable.
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Joel Robinsons says
I have been suffering from this for almost all my life. I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and it felt like I didn’t want to live anymore since I couldn’t live my life being in pain with it.