Aging is a process that covers the entire life-span. The metabolic changes that characterize aging are poorly understood. Gerontology is the study of the aging process. Geriatrics is the branch of medicine concerned with the prevention and treatment of diseases in older persons.
There is, of course, no specific age that characterizes a person as “old”; some people are “old” at 50 years, and others are “young” at 70 years. About 24 million people in the United States today are over 65 years old. Most of these people are productive, live in their own homes, and enjoy good health. Good nutrition, heredity, and environment play dominant roles in the maintenance of health.
Nutritional needs
As you well know, it is altogether too common for people to gain weight as they become older. This weight gain is explained in part by a progressively lower basal metabolism after 25 years of age. In addition, older men and women are usually less active than they were in their youth.
The recommended energy allowance at 51 to 75 years for men is 2400 kcal and for women is 1800 kcal. The allowances for thiamin, riboflavin, and niacin are slightly lower to correspond to these lower calorie requirements. The allowances for protein and most minerals and vitamins are the same as for younger adults. Provided that she does not have an anemia, the woman who reaches 51 years can meet her iron needs with a daily intake of 10 mg.
Problems of food intake
People over 65 years of age are no more like one another than teenagers are like one another. The nurse is likely to encounter a great variety of problems concerned with adequate nutrition of older persons. She needs to be alert to these problems, and to use ingenuity, patience, and kindness in solving them.
1. Inability to chew is a frequent source of difficulty because of poorly fitting dentures or absence of teeth.
2. Appetite usually declines in later years because the senses of smell and taste are less acute, the secretion of saliva and gastric juices may be reduced, and the satisfactions of sociability with family and friends may be lacking. Chronic disease and medications often interfere with the appetite.
3. Complaints of heartburn, belching, indigestion, and flatulence are frequent. Specific foods, especially fruits, vegetables, and spicy foods, are often blamed for these effects, but no firm rules can be given that apply to all persons. Thus, one individual experiences discomfort every time he eats onions, and another enjoys onions and tolerates them well. Concern for the individual would omit onion for the former and include them for the latter.
4. Constipation is a common problem of the older individual and is related to the reduction of muscle tone of the gastrointestinal tract and to lessened activity. It is aggravated by eating too many soft, low-fiber foods and failing to drink sufficient fluid.
5. Chronic diseases of the heart, kidney, circulatory system, gastrointestinal tract, and joints impose needs for modified diets or interfere with tolerance for foods and ability to manage one’s own diet.
6. A lifetime of poor dietary habits contributes to signs of nutritional deficiency including fatigue, anemia, fragility of bones, poor wound healing, and reduced resistance to infection.
7. Living alone, physical handicaps, inability to shop, poor cooking facilities, low income, frustration, boredom, and fear of the future all reduce the desire to eat or the capacity to prepare adequate meals.
8. Faddism and misinformation are responsible for much poor nutrition. Older people are especially likely to fall prey to the food quack that makes promises of good health, vigor, and even cure of disease.
*80/234/5*
GENERAL HEALTH
