Part 1 - On Malnutrition Caused by Disease and Aging

In this first part, we will focus on malnutrition caused by diseases and aging, a point closely related with special medical food.

As economy develops and living standard improves, malnutrition due to hunger and poverty has become rare, but it didn’t disappear. Instead, its form changed to the malnutrition caused by disease and aging.

A research carried out by Health Science Center of St. Louis University shows that over 86% of the patients in global are in malnutrition or are facing risk of malnutrition. Besides, 67% in nursing home, 91% in rehabilitation center and 38% in community are all facing the same problem.

Malnutrition of patients is mainly caused by diseases, such as gastrointestinal disease, hepatobiliary and pancreatic diseases, cancer, trauma, infection, chronic wasting disease, etc.. For example, patients of gastric cancer are 65%-68% possible to suffer from malnutrition. As data shows, about 30%-40% European inpatients are malnourished or potentially malnourished, and so are about 40% Asian inpatients. However, only small scale of inpatients in China are surveyed on malnutrition rate. It’s not systematic. For example, around the year of 2000, a professor in Beijing Union Medical College Hospital surveyed in 10 cities and found that the malnutrition rate of domestic inpatients was about 30%. However, malnutrition has deeper influence on disease treatment. Step by step, malnutrition can lead to decreasing resistance, increasing infection risk, more complications, higher death rate, rising costs in the hospital and longer staying in hospital.

(pictures from web)

The elderly, especially those who lives lonely, is another group of suffering from malnutrition risk. It cannot be denied that metabolism declines as they are aging. Once they are over the age of 60, the seniors’ organ functions declines and ingestion of nutrition decreases. Then, rising risk of malnutrition follows. According to a report in USA, actual vitamin intake of around 50% old people is lower than the recommended. And ingested calories of 20% of them is lower than 1000 K cal.. Besides, one third of those who lives independently are facing the risk of malnutrition. The 4^th China Nutrition and Health Survey tells us the following facts. First, the average malnutrition rate of the elderly over the age of 60 is 12.4%. Malnutrition in rural areas occurs more than that in urban areas. And malnutrition can cause worse illness condition and shorted life.

Aging, together with disease, will make this problem more severe. On the 35^th Clinical Nutrition Week of American Society of Parenteral and Internal Nutrition, a research report is released. It compares malnutrition rate of elderly cancer patients (over 65 years old) with that of relatively younger people (less than 65 years old) in the same condition. The the result indicates that the former is over 60%, which is obviously higher than the latter.

For the introduction, click here: https://www.grand-packing.com/Introduction-Special-Medical-Food-Industry-id8780073.html