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Continue ShoppingIf you have a sensitivity to gluten or struggle with celiac disease, following and maintaining a gluten-free diet can serve to improve your health by leaps and bounds. But with its benefits also come some concerns.
Gluten-free foods are often missing important vitamins and minerals, and this gets passed directly on to your body. As such, there are many nutrients that you may potentially be lacking, including vitamins D, B6, and B12, folate, iron, calcium, thiamin, niacin, and riboflavin.
To ensure that you are getting the nutrients your body needs, we would like to share with you the best ways to boost your health so that you feel better and function at your very best!
Studies show that those who are on gluten-free diets are at risk for vitamin B6 deficiency.
Without this vital substance, your body will have a harder time:
As such, you want to do all that you can to boost your vitamin B6 intake. Fortunately, many healthy foods have this much-needed nutrient and are rather easy to come by. Did you know that a single banana is loaded with enough vitamin B6 to make up for 20% of your recommended daily intake?
Other foods that can help boost your vitamin B6 include turkey, chicken breast, tuna, chickpeas, and salmon. If you don’t like the taste of these foods, try getting creative, and find new ways to incorporate them into your diet.
As part of the B vitamin family, folate is commonly known to be responsible for supporting the health of both mom and baby during pregnancy. It’s also important for our bodies to continue getting this nutrient all throughout our life.
This is because folate is key in helping your body create new, healthy cells. Foods that contain gluten are usually rich with folate, so it’s not a problem for those without dietary restrictions. But if you’re on a strict gluten-free diet, you need to strive for more folate intake to ensure that your body is able to make healthy cells when necessary.
How can you go about this? The answer lies in green foods. Broccoli, peas, Brussels sprouts, spinach, and asparagus are all foods that are loaded with folate. To get an idea of how many greens you’ll need to eat to reach your recommended daily intake: 2/3 of a cup of boiled spinach will put you just over the halfway mark.
Interestingly, peanuts are also rich in folate. It does admittedly take a lot (somewhere around 10 ounces), but there are plenty of recipes that will help ensure you are getting more folate in your diet.
Don’t forget that gluten-free supplements can also help. Our Glow Formula contains folate if you’d like a helping hand in boosting your intake. Glow also provides you with vitamins A, C, and B12, biotin, and zinc.
Vitamin D works in conjunction with sunlight--your skin has a natural response to sunlight every time you come into contact with it, which helps your body obtain the vitamin D it needs. You can find vitamin D in many dairy products, as well as lots of cereals.
Obviously, a gluten-free diet can greatly limit your intake of both. It’s important for your body to get plenty of vitamin D, especially if you suffer from celiac disease, as you are at greater risk of vitamin D deficiency.
The problem with vitamin D is that it isn’t naturally found in many foods, although there are some notable exceptions such as sockeye salmon and swordfish. In fact, these two fish are loaded with vitamin D. Egg yolks are also a relatively good choice for getting vitamin D, although you would need to eat about 10 a day to reach your recommended daily intake (and this is definitely not recommended--generally you want to tap out at about 4 eggs per day).
If your gluten-free diet allows you to eat dairy products, you have a better chance of getting the nutrients you need. Milk is a particularly good choice, and there are gluten-free forms of yogurt that will help you reach your daily goal.
Keep an eye out for certain orange juice brands, too. Some are vitamin D-fortified to ensure that you are staying healthy.
Luckily, vitamin D is also another ingredient in the Glow Formula we mentioned earlier!
We have been taught that calcium builds strong bones since we were young. But gluten-free diets can make it tough to get this beneficial nutrient, especially if you’ve had to eliminate dairy from your diet.
You may need to acquire a taste for them, but canned fish that contains bones is a great choice for getting calcium in your daily diet, as is tofu. Depending on your likes and dislikes, you may need to find some helpful recipes to make these food choices more palatable.
The GoBiotix Complete Probiotic Multivitamin is gluten-free just like all of our products, and contains calcium, alongside some of the other nutrients we’re about to go over, too!
Iron is found in many meat products and shouldn’t be hard to come by. Meats like turkey and beef are high in iron, as are tuna and oysters.
If your gluten-free diet is also vegetarian, you aren’t without options. Consuming just a cup of soybeans will give you half of the recommended daily intake for iron. Legumes and lentils are other great choices for getting iron.
If you’re feeling worn-down and tired all the time, you may just need to inject a healthy dose of vitamin B12 into your diet. Many kinds of cereal contain enough vitamin B12 to give you the recommended daily amount.
But if you’re on a gluten-free diet, many of these cereals are out of the question. Fortunately, it’s easy to make up for any missed vitamin B12 that you’re not getting from cereal in the morning. Meats and fish are particularly good choices for this essential nutrient, as are dairy products like milk and cheese.
With the right amount of vitamin B12, your body will be able to properly maintain its blood and nerve cells, thereby boosting your energy. If you have celiac disease, you are more so at the risk of not getting sufficient vitamin B12, so it’s vital that you seek out foods that can boost your daily intake.
To ensure that you get 100% of your daily value, try our Immunity Frizz Wellness Booster. You will enjoy the benefits of a stronger, healthier immune system while getting the essential nutrients your body needs.
If you’re looking for more ways to energize your body, try increasing your daily intake of B vitamins. You can do this by searching for foods that contain riboflavin, thiamin, and niacin. When consumed, your body converts these nutrients into energy.
Riboflavin is found in dairy products, like milk or yogurt. In fact, just a glass of milk will give you the recommended daily amount of riboflavin. If dairy is out, turn to soy nuts or almonds.
For a great source of thiamin, try eating a half cup of lima beans or peas, as this will put you at half of your recommended daily intake. Potatoes and acorn squash are other great choices for consuming thiamin.
For niacin, you can find this nutrient in poultry, fish, meats, and dairy products. If you can’t consume dairy, you can find niacin in foods like pumpkin seeds, portabella mushrooms, peanuts, and beans.
Sources:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-folate/art-20364625
https://www.health.com/condition/osteoporosis/12-ways-to-get-your-daily-vitamin-d