Gluten Sensitivity and Nutritional Loss

Have You Had Your Nutritional Levels Checked?

For people with gluten sensitivity, one of the biggest delays in healing has to do with a deficiency of vitamins and minerals. Gluten sensitivity is a nutritional issue.
Many doctors check their patients for iron deficiency, but fail to check other essential nutrients like vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, selenium, zinc, chromium, B-vitamins, etc. Failure to address nutritional deficiencies can lead to delayed healing and delayed response to a gluten free diet.

What You Can Do to Prevent Nutritional Side Effects:

Get tested for vitamin and mineral deficiencies. It is important that you receive more than just a standard serum test. Standard test results do not measure if nutrients are properly functioning within the body. At Integrative Medicine of New Jersey, the following lab tests are used to assess your nutritional status thoroughly:

• Micronutrient Testing from SpectraCell Laboratories (highly specialized micronutrient analysis) – This test measures your intracellular nutritional requirements within your white blood cells and gives an accurate assessment of your nutrient status over the last 4-8 months. It measures how selected vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other essential micronutrients are actually functioning within the white blood cells, and indicates if nutrients are being absorbed and functioning properly. This test allows for early intervention to correct deficiencies and promote health.
• 25 OH D – This is a special vitamin D test.
• Homocysteine (blood test)
• Iodine (blood test)

Proper nutrition is the key to healing. If you are lacking any essential nutrients, your body will not be able to properly heal and your progress on a gluten free diet will be hindered. Patients who fail to respond to a gluten free diet are likely to be nutritionally deficient.

Many Medications Cause Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies

Additionally, commonly prescribed medications have been shown to contribute to nutritional deficiencies. For example, blood pressure medications can cause deficiencies in magnesium, potassium, and B-vitamins. If you are taking a prescribed medication, have Dr. Rimma Sherman test your nutritional status and provide you with suggestions for supplementation with micronutrients. The recommended supplements at Integrative Medicine of New Jersey contain the highest quality ingredients in their most bioavailable forms and are formulated to provide strengths and dosing consistent with clinical experience and double-blind, placebo-controlled studies, the gold standard of research design. Available through health professionals, finished products are pure, sophisticated and hypo-allergenic to optimize the long-term health of the most sensitive patients. The supplements are registered in the U.S, GMP certified in Canada and exceeds the standards of the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) for supplement manufacturing.