One-third of older Canadians at dietary threat, examine finds

One-third of Canadian adults aged 55 or older are nutritionally in danger, doubtlessly resulting in elevated hospital stays, extra emergency visits and doctor consultations for doable infections, a brand new examine discovered.

The examine, Baseline vitamin threat as measured by SCREEN-8 predicts self-reported 12-month healthcare service use of older adults 3 years later, was printed in Utilized Physiology, Diet, and Metabolism and is co-authored by Vanessa Trinca, a analysis affiliate in Kinesiology and Well being Sciences at Waterloo.

The College of Waterloo researchers assessed information from greater than 22,000 community-dwelling adults aged 55 and over from the Canadian Longitudinal Research on Growing older. After an preliminary analysis, they adopted up with individuals as much as three years later to trace their health-service use over the earlier yr.

Researchers used the SCREEN-8 software (Seniors within the Group Threat Analysis for Consuming and Diet) to measure a person’s vitamin threat. They discovered that these with larger SCREEN-8 scores on the preliminary screening – indicating higher vitamin – had considerably decrease odds of reporting an in a single day hospital keep, visiting a hospital emergency room, or seeing a health care provider for an an infection when adopted up three years later.

“Whereas these outcomes make sense intuitively, they spotlight how a simple and cheap software can simply be used to doubtlessly make an unlimited distinction in bettering health-care outcomes and prices,” stated Dr. Heather Keller, a professor within the Division of Kinesiology and Well being Sciences and Schlegel Analysis Chair in Diet and Growing older.

“SCREEN-8 needs to be a routine a part of main care apply, though it may be self-administered at dwelling.”

Diet threat amongst older adults is a major concern, particularly amongst community-dwelling people, because it precedes malnutrition. The eight questions on SCREEN-8 collect details about weight change, urge for food, consuming challenges – akin to choking or issue swallowing – meal preparation behaviors and fruit, vegetable and fluid consumption.

The examine pattern included an equal variety of men and women, with a imply age of about 66 years. Most individuals had been dwelling with a companion and two-thirds of individuals surveyed had post-secondary levels. One of many examine’s limitations was that the individuals sampled had been predominately extremely educated and white, which means that it’s not totally consultant of Canadians.

“Figuring out who’s in danger nutritionally permits people the potential for modifying behaviors to avert destructive well being outcomes,” Keller stated. “Additional analysis can assist decide how health-care practitioners can greatest triage and supply schooling, programming and providers to offset excessive threat.”