What If Certain Foods Make My Symptoms Worse?
What should you do if you think certain foods are making your fibromyalgia symptoms worse? The first thing you should do is keep a food diary. After a month, you may have some idea about which foods could be provoking symptoms. You could then try eliminating those foods from your diet for two weeks to see what happens. Don't cut out a whole food category, and make sure you are getting the vitamins and minerals that these foods provide from other sources. It is also important to let your healthcare provider know that you are doing this.
You may be wondering, "Why not just cut out the food and see if my symptoms get better?" It may be tempting to conclude that fibromyalgia pain gets better or worse because of what was added or eliminated from the diet the day or week before. However, the unpredictable ups and downs of fibromyalgia make it hard to establish a relationship between disease and diet. Fibromyalgia research scientists have only recently begun to study nutritional therapy for this disease.