Malnutrition: Why is it affecting the elderly
Improvements in healthcare, along with the development of vaccines and medical treatments, have increased life expectancy worldwide. This has changed the demographic of the global population, with the proportion of older adults increasing. Within Europe, 19.2% of the population were aged 65 years or over in 2016, and it is expected this will increase to 29.1% by 2080. With increasing numbers of elderly, it is important that older people maintain their health status and independence for as long as possible. Older adults are at increased risk of developing malnutrition due to age-related changes in physiology including changes in body composition, increased requirements for protein and certain micronutrients, deteriorations in appetite and sensory function, which all occur to some extent as people age. Recent work from the MaNuEL project, examining malnutrition in older people found that pooled prevalence rates of high malnutrition risk across all countries were 28.0% for the hospital setting (n = 127 study samples), 17.5% for residential care (n = 30), and 8.5% for community-dwelling older people (n = 32). Prevalence rates were higher in women, people aged at least 80 years and in patients with comorbidities, and varied by screening tool, between countries and by healthcare setting. This 45 minute webinar will discuss malnutrition in the older population, focusing on protein-energy malnutrition. Findings from the MaNuEL study including the impact, prevalence, determinants and effective nutritional interventions will be discussed.
What will I learn?
- Learn about why there is an increased risk of malnutrition in the elderly
- Discuss findings from the MaNuEL study and situational dependent risk
- Determine effective nutritional interventions to prevent malnutrition.
Curriculum
- 1 Section
- 2 Lessons
- Lifetime
- Malnutrition: why is it affecting the elderly2
Instructor
Eileen Gibney is Professor of Nutrition at University College Dublin. Her work includes research in the area of personalised nutrition, where she investigates inter-individual variation in response to nutrition interventions, and develops strategies and innovative technologies for personalised dietary and lifestyle feedback, including supporting the transition to healthy and sustainable diets.
Professor Gibney has led several intervention studies examining response to different dairy foods, including alternative production systems. She also considers the food environment examining provision of foods, and delivery of population nutrition guidance. She has worked on many national and international projects including; Food4me, Food for Health Ireland, Insight and FNS-Cloud. Eileen is Director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health, and is currently a Trustee of the Nutrition Society.
