The Fibromyalgia Healing Diet

by Christine Craggs-Hinton

Fibromyalgia is a painful, chronic condition which can result in symptoms such as fatigue, pain, insomnia, IBS or depression. But, our bodies are powerful self-generating organisms, and the right foods stimulate healing of the body's systems at a fundamental level. This new edition of "The Fibromyalgia Healing Diet" looks at the latest research on how to redress nutritional imbalances, including information about osteoporosis, the importance of vitamin D, and the correct balance of carbohydrates, protein and fat for people with fibromyalgia. Although this isn't a calorie-counting diet, a happy side-effect of these guidelines can also be weight loss in people who are overweight.Topics what it means to have fibromyalgia; why diet is important in treating fibromyalgia; essential nutrients; substances to avoid; supplements that may help; a simple detox programme; losing any excess fat - and the toxins that may go with it; and, delicious recipes.As a fibromyalgia sufferer and the author of Living with Fibromyalgia (also for Sheldon Press) Christine Craggs-Hinton says that while measures such as gentle exercise, complementary therapies and pain management techniques may improve your condition, this diet treats the cause of the disease, not just the symptoms, and will help you get your life back again.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Ezra · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book with the aim of reading it to help my partner with fibromyalgia. There are few points I wanted to make :
A lot of the book focused around very simple aspects of diet. Of course we know to feature protein and carbohydrates in a diet, and the list of what vitamins you should have is basically every vitamin- again very common sense. None of the base aspects of this diet contained anything beyond the basic idea of eat your veggies.

However, when the book did branch out into any sort of original points, I found myself audibly sighing. You go from "broccoli is good for vitamins" one page to "tap water is unsafe and filled with toxins" the next page. They expect you to either have distilled water (which lack all of the minerals the book preaches you need!!) or some sort of fancy water. I don't want a twenty day detoxification program! I want to actually learn about what foods trigger fibromyalgia symptoms! It is very, very hard to trust any of what a book says when it hits you with "tap water is unsafe".

This brings me on to another issue I have with the book. Even though the author has fibromyalgia herself, there is no consideration for readers who aren't in the "healed" state of fibromyalgia she is, or an otherwise very fortunate position. There is an acknowledgement at the start that the diet might not entirely help everyone, but there is little acknowledgement of how truly inaccessible this sort of diet is. With fibromyalgia being a pain based and brain fog heavy disorder, this book expects you to be able to entirely cook meals from scratch to avoid "toxins", and buy all of these more expensive ingredients (how dare you consider using normal processed flour instead of trekking around an entire store, risking severe pain, to find the slightly more nutrient filled stuff). There is no consideration that many people with such major chronic illnesses may find themselves unable to cook, unable to work to have extra money, and unable to adapt their diet in such a major way. There is no consideration for accessibility requirements in cooking, such as struggle to hold knives, or prepare vegetables. No, all canned food is evil so you, with your chronic pain disorder, should be able to cook vegetable stock from scratch!

The entire book seems to frame itself as the only correct option, and as if any other route is poisoning your body.

A more minor point is that the recipes are some of the worst formatted recipes I have ever seen. For a recipe book designed for those with brain fog, you'd think that you'd set out a recipe in anyway other than just a paragraph of text for instructions. Typically you'd use a structured bullet point list of steps! But I guess bullet points might add unnecessary toxins to the recipe.

Perhaps I entered this book with the wrong expectations. But I was hoping to find some ways to help my boyfriend improve his own diet with some small, but helpful changes. There were maybe two things I could take away that were common sense already. There was no consideration for how the symptoms of the disorder might interact with cooking as a whole, and generally I could forget I was reading a book on fibromyalgia for half of it. Which isn't what you want when you are trying to learn how to help someone live with a disorder. There are hugely unrealistic expectations, and I believe the author is writing from a very privileged point of view

Would not recommend. Unless a wedge of cantaloupe melon sounds an ideal and filling breakfast for you.

[Madame Lucretia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a waste of time. It quickly contradicts itself, and just gets worse, especially when you get to the recipes. It starts out saying to not eat gluten, and try for low oxalate, but most of the recipes seem to contain oxalate and gluten. Not to mention theyre of the belief you should only drink fancy water. Don't waste your time with the book, it's useless.

[Cherise · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly obvious stuff, although the section on vitamins and supplements should bring my review to 2.5 stars. I was hoping for more vegetarian/vegan recipes. The first half of the book talks about limiting meat, but most of the mains have meat in them.