Living with Fibromyalgia: FibroFix Book Review

Setting:
My couch and the hotel last weekend where I read the book, The Fibro Fix by Dr. David Brady, ND.  My fibro has been bad for months, now, though the nicer weather has been helping a little.  The chronic headache is bad, worse since the failed Topamax trial.

Book Summary:
Dr. Brady's theory about fibromyalgia is that A) it is often other conditions that are misdiagnosed by doctors who don't take the time to really find out what's going on and by the fact that many diseases/conditions are very similar and B) following a high-protein diet that eliminates allergens and helps detoxify, drinking a lot of water, low-impact exercise, and working on training the brain to relax instead of react are the best ways to deal with the disease and reverse the symptoms in some patients.

He has a 21 day detox diet plan, and while he really pushes his products for sale on his website, he tells readers of the book how to come up with something similar at home.  To be fair, what he says to do instead is missing many of the components in his boxed program, so it isn't exactly identical.

In reality, his diet is similar to some other gut biome resetting diets on the market these days (such as Dr. Mullin's Gut Balance Revolution), and he makes good points about the difficulties of exercise and living with pain.  He is pretty clear on the latest theories and research regarding fibromyalgia and chronic pain, and his plan is a good one.  I will be starting a modified version of his 21 day program this Sunday, as will my husband.

Problems So Far:
Brady has a couple of websites, and his customer service people admitted to me this week that the FibroFix 21 Day box is identical to the PaleoCleanse 14 Day box.  Turns out, Brady is the Chief Medical Officer of Designs for Health, which is actually the company, Ashley Martin, but FibroFix is supposedly made by Formulated Nutricueticals, LLC in Florida, though Formulated Nutricueticals said that everything is from Designs for Health.  Moreover, when I looked up Formulated Nutricueticals, their actual office is the same as Dr. Brady's in Connecticut.

I found this out in trying to track down information about the source of their pea protein.  My husband is a QA chemist for a nutritional company that stopped using pea protein two years ago due to too much mold.  Turns out Designs for Health only has testing certificates for the final product, though they say they can provide quality certificates for each component/ingredient on their website.  I've been told over and over that they test and assure quality, but the certificate just says the testing method is "by input."  I'm curious where they're getting their pea protein and how they're making sure it doesn't have mold.

After that, I'm not sure I can recommend buying Dr. Brady's supplements or the FibroFix/PaleoCleanse box programs.  The actual program has a lot going for it, which is why we're trying it, and I hope that it can help get this latest flare under control and help me get my pain at least at a more manageable level.