Vegan diet alleviates fibromyalgia symptoms

Abstract

The effect of a strict, low-salt, uncooked vegan diet rich in lactobacteria on symptoms in 18 fibromyalgia patients during and after a 3-month intervention period in an open, non-randomized controlled study was evaluated. As control 15 patients continued their omnivorous diet. The groups did not differ significantly from each other in the beginning of the study in any other parameters except in pain and urine sodium. The results revealed significant improvements in Visual analogue scale of pain (VAS) (p=0.005), joint stiffness (p=0.001), quality of sleep (p=0.0001), Health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) (p=0.031), General health questionnaire (GHQ) (p=0.021), and a rheumatologist's own questionnaire (p=0.038). The majority of patients were overweight to some extent at the beginning of the study and shifting to a vegan food caused a significant reduction in body mass index (BMI) (p=0.0001). Total serum cholesterol showed a statistically significant lowering (p=0.003). Urine sodium dropped to 1/3 of the beginning values (p=0.0001) indicating good diet compliance. It can be concluded that vegan diet had beneficial effects on fibromyalgia symptoms at least in the short run.

Correlates of Body Mass Index in Women With Fibromyalgia

“…Perhaps the improvements noted in participants were due to weight loss rather than specific composition of the recommended diet. Unfortunately, it is difficult to draw any conclusions, since these few studies had very small sample sizes (ranging from 18–30) and weight or weight loss was not always addressed (Donaldson, Speight & Loomis, 2001; Kaartinen et al, 2000). …”

Do Nutritional Factors Interact with Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain? A Systematic Review

“…Key data from the included studies are shown in Table 1. The 12 eligible papers included five randomised controlled trials [52][53][54][55][56], one non-randomised controlled trial [57], three uncontrolled clinical trials [58][59][60], one case-control study [49], and two cross-sectional studies [50,51].…”

“…In total, four different chronic musculoskeletal pain conditions were studied: osteoarthritis (n = 3) [50,52,54], rheumatoid arthritis (n = 4) [51,53,55,59], fibromyalgia (n = 4) [49,[56][57][58], and general musculoskeletal pain (n = 1) [60].…”

“…Investigated types of dietary patterns in the experimental studies included weight loss diet (n = 2) [52,54], peptide diet (n = 1) [53], aspartame eliminated diet (n = 1) [56], vegetarian diet (n = 2) [55,60], vegan diet (n = 2) [57,59], and FODMAP (low fermentable oligo-di-mono saccharides and polyols) diet (n = 1) [58]. Additionally, in the three observational studies [49][50][51], dietary patterns of patients were obtained, and characteristics of these patterns were explored.…”

“…Using the Cochrane Collaboration's tool, only one of the five randomised controlled trials was rated as having good quality [52][53][54][55][56], one was rated as fair quality [53], and three were scored as poor quality [52,55,56]. Using the QUALSYST tool for non-randomised controlled trials and uncontrolled clinical trials, two studies scored 0.90 [58,60], whereas two other studies were rated as 0.73 and 0.79 on the total score of 1.00 [57,59]. Using the Newcastle Ottawa risk of bias assessment tool, both cross-sectional studies were rated with five out of seven stars [50,51].…”