Nutritional approaches to reduce fibromyalgia pain

• In this study, supplementing with vitamin D3 reduced perceptions of pain:  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24438771/

• This study showed that Extra virgin olive oil may help:  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27443526/

• Supplementing with CoQ10 helped reduce pain “possibly via improving mitochondrial function, reducing inflammation, and decreasing brain activity.”:  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31387429/

• Supplementing with Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) while taking the pain medications pregabalin and duloxetine helped more than just taking the medications alone:  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26334329/

• The spice saffron helped patients as much as the drug duloxetine (and, as a bonus, has been shown to help with depression):  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30456199/

• Dietary MSG can make fibromyalgia symptoms worse, so avoiding it may help:  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22766026/

• Supplementing with acetyl L-carnitine helped patients in this study:  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17543140/

• A mostly raw vegetarian diet helped, but this study is quite old and only 20 subjects completed the trial: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11602026/

• This review was not specific to fibromyalgia pain, but found that several different forms of vitamin C were effective at reducing different types of pain:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6142887/

• This study suggested that insulin resistance from chronically high blood sugar may help drive fibromyalgia:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216079).  It found that treating the insulin resistance with the drug Metformin reduced pain levels.  The study was later retracted, but not for any problems with the findings or conclusion.  It was retracted because the authors didn’t follow proper procedures to obtain ethics approval and permission to use medical records.  Shame on the authors, but I’m still interested in their hypothesis:  That high blood sugar can cause insulin resistance and damage to small blood vessels in the brain, causing widespread pain.  If they are correct, in addition to medicines for blood sugar control, lifestyle changes to reduce insulin resistance may help.  This would mostly mean reducing the intake of carbohydrates, especially processed or high-glycemic carbohydrates.

Do you know of other relevant findings that I missed?  If so, please send them my way (at jill@dietforhealth.com) and I’ll update this list whenever I find something new.  Chronic pain is the absolute worst, and I wish you all the best in finding relief.