Nutritional supplement food for the elderly

There is no "must-supplement list" that applies to all elderly people. Whether to supplement, what to supplement, and how much to supplement depends entirely on the individual's daily dietary gaps, basic disease restrictions, and nutrition-related indicators in physical examinations. There is no need to blindly follow the trend and stock up on Internet celebrity models, and there is no need to reject all nutritional supplements as an "IQ tax."

Don’t think this is a cliché. A while ago, Aunt Zhang, who lived downstairs, had just stepped into a trap. She heard in the live broadcast that “elderly people must take protein powder, fish oil, and aminoglycosides.” She gritted her teeth and spent more than 3,000 yuan to stock up on half a year’s supply. Within half a month of eating, she got gout. , the pain was so bad that she couldn't go downstairs. When she went to the hospital to check her blood uric acid, it soared to 580. Only then did she find out that the protein powder she bought was derived from soy protein isolate and its purines were not low. She already had hyperuricemia, which was equivalent to feeding herself triggers every day.

Nowadays, the opinions on supplements for the elderly are actually very polarized: online health bloggers always say that "the digestive function of the elderly deteriorates, the nutrients they eat cannot be retained, and even if they are deficient in 10 kinds of nutrients," they would like to give you a complete list of supplements for you to copy.； However, most doctors in the hospital's clinical nutrition department will say, "If you can eat normally, give priority to taking supplements. Supplements are just a supplement to fill the gap, not a necessity." In fact, both sides are reasonable, but they are applicable to different groups of people.

Take Uncle Li, who I met at a community nutrition education last week, for example. He is 72 years old and has better teeth than many young people. He drinks a cup of 300ml warm milk and a boiled egg every morning, eats lean meat or fish as big as his palm at noon and night, and can eat a full plate of green leafy vegetables. He goes hiking with his old friend when he has nothing to do. His physical examination albumin, bone density, and serum vitamin levels are all within the normal range. In this case, he didn't need to take any additional supplements. Previously, his son Xiaoshun bought him imported aminoglycosides. He always had stomach pain after taking it for two months, and it was cured when he stopped. There was no degenerative disease in the joints, and hard supplements only burdened the metabolism of the liver and kidneys.

Many elderly people have a superstitious belief in imported supplements, thinking that they are more expensive because they are more pure and more effective. This is actually quite controversial. An old user brought me a can of deep-sea fish oil he brought back from the United States. He said that he spent almost 400 yuan on it and took two pills a day. After three months of taking it, his blood lipids were found to be high. I checked the ingredient list and found that it is a medical-grade fish oil for people with hypertriglyceridemia. Each pill contains 1g of Omega 3. For an ordinary elderly person, 300-500mg per day is enough for daily health care. He ate three times more, so it’s strange that his blood lipids are not high. On the contrary, the domestic brand of fish oil that we often recommend to the elderly in the community has the official blue hat label. Each pill contains exactly 200 mg of Omega 3. It is suitable to take two pills a day. One bottle only costs more than 60, and the effect is no worse than the imported one.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that supplements are useless. When there is a dietary gap, taking the right supplements is much more effective than forcing yourself to eat. There was an 80-year-old man who had just undergone gastric cancer surgery. He vomited everything he ate, and his albumin dropped to 30g/L. He could not make up for it with dietary supplements. After drinking short peptide whey protein for half a month, he returned to the normal range after a follow-up examination. Even the doctor said that the recovery was faster than expected. There is also Aunt Chen in the community. She lost bone mass quickly after menopause and had diarrhea when drinking milk. The bone density test showed that she had reached the critical value of osteoporosis. She took a calcium citrate supplement and 400 IU of vitamin D every day. After a year of supplementation, she went for a check again. Not only did the bone density not drop, but it increased by 0.02 units. Now she can carry 20 kilograms of vegetables when going to the vegetable market without difficulty.

The most important thing to note is that don’t believe in those “efficacy-based supplements” that are so boasted that they “can cure diabetes” or “can stop high blood pressure after taking it for three months” are all lies. Nutritional supplements have never had a therapeutic effect and are not even qualified to replace medicines. Also, don’t take them blindly. Many elderly people have several supplements on hand. Calcium and vitamin D are already added to the multivitamin, and they need to take calcium tablets and cod liver oil separately. There was an old man who took these supplements for three months. His physical examination revealed kidney crystals. If he were two steps later, he would have developed kidney stones.

I have been doing community nutrition education for almost five years. I have seen people who took the correct supplements and did not catch a cold for a whole year, and did not get out of breath when climbing stairs. I have also seen people who took supplements randomly and ended up in the emergency room. In fact, it is not that complicated. Spending tens of dollars more on the annual physical examination, adding serum albumin, vitamin levels, and bone density check items, and taking the list to ask a nutritionist for a few questions is more reliable than watching ten health videos or listening to ten health care product lectures. After all, when it comes to nutritional supplements, the best ones are what suits you.