 Raw and vegan diets seem to really help reduce fibromyalgia symptoms, but about just a mostly raw diet, that was tried next. Fibromyalgia engulfs patients in a downward, reinforcing cycle of unrestorative sleep, chronic pain, fatigue, and activity, and depression. So they tested whether a mostly raw and actually vegan diet would significantly improve fibromyalgia symptoms, and boy did it! FIQ is the standard survey designed specifically to measure the impact of fibromyalgia on a person's life. At the beginning of the study, they were doing pretty bad. By two months, though, they were doing significantly better, and by the end of the study, at seven months, there were significant improvements in each one of these measures. So less physical impairment, they were feeling better, less absenteeism, less pain, fatigue, stiffness, anxiety, depression. In summary, a diet and prevention using a mostly raw, pure vegetarian diet produced dramatic improvements in fibromyalgia syndrome symptoms. When this study was reviewed by current rheumatology reports, the editor noted that it had the most impressive results of any recent fibromyalgia treatment study. For example, nearly three times the improvement that the Mayo Clinic reported for their fibromyalgia program. Yes, it was not a double-blind placebo-controlled study, but as they note, it's difficult to design such a study when it comes to diets, since people tend to notice when they've switched to a vegan diet. So raw vegan diets worked, mostly raw vegan diets worked. Even just eating vegetarian seemed to help. What about just eating mostly vegetarian? That was the one tried most recently. Fibromyalgia symptoms put on a mostly vegetarian diet for two weeks and did not see any significant improvement. Maybe if they gave it more time, we don't know. Bottom line is that the best available science to date suggests eating plant-based diets, whether vegetarian or vegan, may help people with fibromyalgia. Just because of the best science we have doesn't mean it's necessarily very good science, right? These were all very small, poorly controlled, relatively short-term studies, but what's the downside of giving it a try? Turns out that people with chronic widespread pain syndromes tend to eat pretty crappy diets, perhaps explaining their higher rates of other chronic diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease. Even if a healthy diet doesn't help their fibromyalgia symptoms, at least it may prevent them from falling ill with something else. The last thing someone who feels miserable all day needs is another disease.