Experience on nutrition courses for the elderly

There is no "universal nutritional diet" suitable for all the elderly. The previously believed statements such as "the elderly should eat as lightly as possible" and "the more supplements they take, the healthier they will be" are all pseudo-common sense that need to be discussed on a case-by-case basis.

I signed up for this class with my mother. Last year, she was diagnosed with mild sarcopenia and hyperlipidemia during a physical examination. I originally thought that this kind of community class was just a formality, memorizing a few sentences of "eat more vegetables and less meat" and that was it. However, I was shocked by the example given by the teacher in the first class - Aunt Zhang in Building 3 of our community, who was diagnosed with hyperlipidemia last year. After that, I stopped eating all meat, eggs, and milk, and ate plain porridge with stir-fried cabbage. As a result, my blood lipids did not drop much after half a year. I fainted while buying vegetables at the vegetable market last month. I was sent to the hospital for a check-up of hypoalbuminemia and anemia. The doctor said that if I continued to eat like this, I would lose all my muscles and fracture my femoral neck if I fell, which is more than 10 times more dangerous than hyperlipidemia.

There was an immediate quarrel in class that day because of this example. An old uncle with all white hair pounded the table and said, I have been a vegetarian for 40 years, I am 86 years old, and I can climb five floors without losing breath. This is an example. The teacher was not in a hurry and pulled out the physical examination records that the old uncle had previously registered in the community. He said that you have been drinking two boxes of milk every day and eating tofu three times a week for decades. Your protein intake is no less than that of people who eat meat. Moreover, your metabolism is good and your blood lipids and blood sugar are normal. Of course there is no problem. But if an old man who has bad teeth and cannot eat soy products and milk still follows you to learn a vegetarian diet, there will definitely be problems. I sat down and nodded as I listened. My grandmother had bad teeth. She followed an old sister to learn to be a vegetarian and lost eight pounds in three months. Later, she was forced to eat a steamed egg every day to recover.

I always refused to let my mother eat egg yolks because she had high cholesterol, but the teacher made it clear in class that as long as the triglycerides are not high enough to require medication, one whole egg a day is perfectly fine. On the contrary, the vitamin D in the egg yolk can also help with calcium absorption, which is much more effective than taking calcium tablets alone. When I got home, I changed my mother's breakfast. She used to have a bowl of white porridge with pickles in the morning, but now she has a small bowl of multigrain porridge, a boiled egg, and half a piece of steamed sweet potato. In the morning, she puts a small handful of plain almonds, and in the afternoon, she heats up a box of pure milk. It has only been more than two months. Last week, I went for a follow-up checkup. The indicators of sarcopenia have actually improved a lot. She herself said that her legs have become weak after walking downstairs recently.

When it comes to calcium supplements, there has been a lot of quarrel on the Internet. One group says that bone broth is all fat and calcium supplements are useless, while the other group says that the elderly in the family will be fine after drinking it for a lifetime. The teacher in the class said quite neutrally: Indeed, the calcium content in bone broth is not as much as a glass of milk. If you drink bone broth to replenish calcium, it will be useless until your blood lipids explode. However, if the elderly have a poor appetite and cannot eat hard food, use bone broth to cook some rotten noodles and some small rapeseed. It can not only enhance the flavor and let the elderly eat two more bites, but also replenish water and collagen. It is not completely impossible to drink, and it does not need to be beaten to death with a stick.

To be honest, I used to buy a bunch of imported supplements for my mother, such as calcium tablets, fish oil, and multivitamins. They were piled up in half the cabinet. She always forgot to take them and I said she was wasting them. The teacher in this class said that as long as you eat enough and have a balanced diet, you don’t need to take so many supplements. I later gave the unopened ones to the elders at home who couldn’t keep up with the meal, and my mother felt a lot more relaxed.

Nowadays, many people like to label the elderly group, saying that they should eat and live as they should. It seems that people over 60 years old must eat according to the same recipe to be healthy. In fact, after taking this course, I realized that there is no standard answer. Everyone’s body is his own. If you eat comfortably and have normal physical examination indicators, it will be more effective than Internet celebrity recipes and sky-high-priced supplements. If I had taken this course two years earlier, I wouldn't have taken so many detours and spent so much money.