My mother has fibro. I am trying to educate her on living "raw" --------in hopes that she may assist her body, in healing itself, in order to overcome fibromyalgia... has anyone had success at beating fibro by changing their diet to raw?

Thank you so much for your time.... I'm hoping someone can lead me to their story of victory over fibro, or a book of someone's victory over fibro, a website about someone's victory over fibro... ok, you probably get the picture, huh? hehe! any info would be great!!!

thanks again!!
joanna

Alissa Cohen, owner of www.rawfoodtalk.com, is known for overcoming fibromyalgia with raw. Personally, I have not. I've been raw for most of over four years. My fibro is better but not cured.

Nomi Shannon did too.

Check out the success stories section in this forum. There are a few threads on it.

Audrey Walker overcame fibromyalgia on raw food. Her story is really inspiring!

Hi,
Here's an article from a medical study of fibromyalgia and raw food showing that it can relieve symptoms

[www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov]

Fibromyalgia is a syndrome, not a disease. This is not to say that it doesnt cause true pain, or that the pain is not real, but that the pain is a collection of symptoms with an underlying cause. What must be treated is the cause of your mothers pain, not just the pain itself. Diagnosing a person with fibromyalgia is irresponisble for that reason, it is technically the same diagnosis as generalized pain disorder (which has been around for years) which is basically just saying that they have no idea what the problem is. But it is very important to understand that 'fibromyalgia' can have many different causes, and that it is only the symptomatic presentation of a disease. Often, it is caused by depression. Again, this is not to say the the pain is in the sufferer's head, or that they are crazy. Depression causes your brain to stabalize with low levels of seratonin. Seratonin is not only the chemical that stimulates happiness, but it also regulates our pain responses. If your seratonin levels are consistently low, you will experience high pain response to mild stimuli, even a gentle touch can cause severe pain. Many people who suffer from this problem reject the idea that it is linked to depression because they feel that that means it is all in their head and will not be taken seriously. This is absolutely not the case. Fibromyalgia pain is very real, but treating only the pain is just like putting on a bandaid. Because the most likely cause of the generalized pain is low seratonin levels, I would try to tackle that angle first. This means (without prescription medication) a healthy diet and gentle (whatever she feels up to) exersize. Raw foodism will definately help in this respect. I would suggest you do some research on natural methods of increasing seratonin levels. Good luck, I really hope you get to the root of your mothers problems

Great information Selenes! I never knew what fibromyalgia actually was.

Joanna, In respect to serotonin levels you may want to research the amino acid 5HTP. I was looking into it to correct serotonin imbalance that was caused by decades of chronic marijuana use that started at a very young age. There are many references to it's use for fibromyalgia. Just Google 5HTP and fibromyalgia. Best of luck to you and your mom.

Aloha, Greg

At the company I work for (we manufacture nutritional supplements and skincare products using a superfruit called seabuckthorn), we've noticed that fibromyalgia sufferers do very well on our supplements; since our products are high in all four Omegas, and Omegas have a positive effect on mood, it's possible that this is the correlation (per selenes512), but we take the tack that fibromyalgia is a symptom of general nutritional deficiency, auto-immune fatigue, chemical fatigue, chronic inflammation, etc., and that a rich nutritional treatment is what is helping (which would support the raw food angle).

It's also important to note that there is a growing correlation between fibromyalgia and gastro-intestinal problems. The theory is that there is a type of gastro-intestinal disorder (they think it might be a bacteria) that causes chronic inflammation, which causes pain sensitivity and other problems, which manifest themselves as fibromyalgia and rosacea, among other things. I wrote about it recently on my company blog: [www.seabuckthorn.net]

From that standpoint, a diet that minimises inflammation (low protein, low in animal products) would probably help.

Its funny, but most disease are like what selenes512 describes about fibromyalgia, which are a collection of symptoms that are given a name. Having a name for a disease, say like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes, implies that the disease has a unique cause and cure, but in fact the cause of most of the chronic diseases is unhealthy lifestyle, and healing of that disease is the correction of the unhealthy aspects of that lifestyle. This is why so many diseases can be healed with a healthy raw food diet and lifestyle.

That's really true, Bryan. Hi, BTW :waves: I don't think we've ever interacted before.

For research for the company I work for (I'm the publicist/science writer/blog upkeeper etc), it's becoming clear that a great many disorders, both traditional ones like heart disease and recent ones like fibromyalgia and rosacea, are actually symptoms of chronic inflammation, and high fat animal-based diets certainly can exacerbate inflammation.

I too have an autoimmune disease, this is why I have started the Raw journey.10 years of getting flare ups. The holidays did me in this year the inflammation and headaches for 2 solids weeks made me realize I cannot eat processed foods. I've been reading and adjusting my diet for so long, I knew instinctively that raw was right,but I never did it,(thinking it too hard), well if I knew that I was going to feel better I would have done it sooner. I see the Dr. again in Feb. which will be 6 weeks raw at that time, I'm looking forward to see how my blood work comes out. I don't know that Autoimmune diseases are ever completely cured,(we are genetically predisposed for them) Ie. Diabetes is a huge autoimmune disease. What I do know is that we were created to eat fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts, not foods with chemicals. Besides diet, it is important to exercise, and avoid stress(not always easy with busy households). I hope you find your answer.

hi joanna

in addition to the nutritional, exercise and emotional healing strategies that were mentioned here ( all very sound and good advice)
i would also suggest that your mother look into energy medicine
by :
1. receiving energy healing
2. learning about it herself to heal herself
3. combination of both

There seems to be a link between fibromialga and mercury, there are lots of links about that if you do a search, so mercury detox might work.