Geriatric Nutrition

Aging is part of living. Every human has the choice of aging healthfully or living with sickness and poor quality of life. In the coming years, human aging will be one of the biggest challenges faced by industrialized countries. Because the average life expectancy is continuously increasing, we may be faced with spending more years in poor health.

Nutrition has a major role in protecting health and slowing disease progression. Paradigms that promote the nutritional components of healthy aging are needed to increase the age of chronic degenerative disease onset and to maintain healthy, functional lives for as long as possible. At this time, there is a tremendous disconnect between nutrition and how it is implemented into healthcare. In a recent interview with Dr. Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, FACN, at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, he stated that while we have the knowledge to prevent degenerative disease, we are still geared principally toward repair and recovery as opposed to health promotion and disease prevention.

While it is widely agreed upon that micronutrients play a large role in promoting health and preventing disease, meeting the nutritional needs of elderly persons, whether they are or are not living in institutionalized settings, is a great challenge. There are no nutrient intake standards at present for the elderly demographic. The World Health Organization says there is an urgent need to create nutrient guidelines, which competent national authorities can use to address the nutritional needs of their growing elderly populations.

Micronutrient deficiencies are common in elderly people due to a number of factors such as reduced food intake, lack of variety in the foods they eat, medications that deplete nutrients and create side effects, the price of foods rich in micronutrients, and the deplorable food choices available in the institutional setting. Additionally, the elderly often suffer from anorexia of aging, because the hormones leptin and ghrelin increase as you age, leading to prolonged satiety and suppressed hunger, which can lead to calorie deficit and malnutrition.