I know from personal experience just what a restricted diet can do to your nutrient levels! When I did a mineral hair test a few years ago, my colleague assessing it for me nearly fainted and I think her direct quote was: “How are you still standing?!”. Er, it must have been mind over matter!
My diet is a lot less restricted than it was, thankfully, but I still feel the fatigue and brain fog associated with a lack of nutrients – especially after a monthly period when it takes me far longer to get my minerals back up. I know this happens to many of you, which is why I mention it (sorry guys!).
So, I thought this piece from Very Well might be useful. It talks about what nutrients you might have an issue with if you are gluten free. Many of us are trulyglutenfree (grain and dairy free) of course or even AIP (autoimmune protocol diet) so this is probably even more crucial, but even being ‘just’ traditional gluten free puts your nutrient levels at risk.
The nice thing about this article is that it gives you how to boost the various identified vulnerable nutrients with food so if you can’t tolerate supplements, that knowledge might help.
Critical Vitamins to Boost If You’re Gluten-Free
I think they may have missed a few out there: magnesium, for example, I see low ALL the time in gluten-free people.
If you want to test your own levels, see the Nutrient Tests page here – you could do the cheap but effective hair test as I did (I was actually looking for heavy metal levels at the time which hair tests are great for) or the Biolab Comprehensive Vitamins test covers most of those. For minerals, I rate the Genova Toxic & Essential Elements test because it – unusually – measures each mineral using the correct methods for each one. Have a read of the Overview on that page for more info.
Hope that’s useful for you.