Book review: ‘The Fibromyalgia Healing Diet’ by Christine Craggs-Hinton
I had high hopes for this book, hoping that it would provide me with the knowledge to have more control over my fibromyalgia through diet. I realized that I would likely be reading some information that I already knew, but I was surprised to find that much of the book is taken up with basic nutritional guidelines and pretty simple advice. Useful if you know nothing at all about nutrition and a healthy diet, but for that kind of information, you’d be better off getting a book written by a qualified nutritionist. In my experience, there aren’t many people with fibromyalgia who don’t already know or have worked out that, for example, tobacco smoke is bad for fibromyalgia and sugar only provides a very temporary fix.
Outside of the elementary information, the author is fond of making definite statements about fibromyalgia and scientific research, without ever backing them up. Very few statements are accompanied by references and actually only six scientific journal articles are included in the list of references, despite multiple refences to unnamed studies. This wouldn’t bother me so much if it were not for me being rather dubious about many of the claims the author makes about fibromyalgia and about what fibromyalgia sufferers should eat, drink and take. She talks about Stone Age people as though they had the ideal diet and makes absolutely no mention of the fact that their life spans would be considered appalling by modern standards. She talks about Fibromyalgia being a modern phenomenon, attributing this entirely to our polluted environment and foods, and seems to be completely ignorant of the fact that fibromyalgia has in all likelihood been around far, far longer but that it is hard to tell because the tests that help to diagnose Fibromyalgia (by ruling out other conditions) were not available 200 years ago. She makes claims that her diet treats the causes of Fibromyalgia – despite the top experts in the world saying that they do not yet know exactly what causes Fibromyalgia. She also makes no mention of the problems many fibromyalgia sufferers would have with her diet because of the cost of organic foods and also its effects on many people’s IBS.
On the plus side, if you really have no idea how diet can affect Fibromyalgia then this is a place to start, even if it is a misleading book for anyone not yet expert in their condition. Half the book also consists of recipes which would be useful to anyone trying to eat a high-fiber, low-GI and nutrient rich diet.
Article submitted by: Lindsey Middlemiss , ButYouDontLookSick.com, © 2006