Considerations for Older Adults

00:00 So next let's move into considerations for older adults.

00:06 Whether it's for ourselves or as we age or for our elders as they are aging infront of us.

00:14 The main consideration with people as they grow older is defenciencies and actual malnutrition.

00:23 And the reason for this is as we're going to learn in the lectures on aging, on cellular aging.

00:31 As cells age or as we age, we become less efficient at extracting nutrients.

00:39 Plus, we in general have smaller and smaller appetite.

00:43 So it's very easy for an older adult to be malnutritioned.

00:50 And so with malnutrition and aging of course, we see an increase risk of disease and slower recovery from illness and surgeries.

01:02 If nutrition is held at a high standard and people are getting exactly what they need than those recovery rates can be much more rapid.

01:12 One thing that I think of most often in encouraging eating in older adults is emphasizing color and shape and texture and variety of smells because all of those census are also on a very slow decline.

01:31 And so it's sort of a compounding effect if we can increase the appeal of food then we can perhaps increase appetite.

01:39 And another component that I think of is the socialness around eating if there is a pattern of socialness around eating than there is more desire to eat.

01:50 Because it's part of everyday routine and sometimes we have our older adults living alone.

01:56 So that's one focus that you can consider when advising patients with older parents or older adults themselves is if they can get into social settings for the dining experiences at least you know, a couple of times a week.

02:13 So the main concerns as far as nutritional needs for older adults are calcium, vitamin D and B12.

02:22 So you put those into the back of your mind as the three most important vitamin supplementation or considerations when we're dealing with older adults.

02:33 And of course you know one of them is really simple.

02:35 Just to get outside a little bit more.

02:38 And that can have a huge impact on health for a multitude of reasons.