Eating Difficulties as You Grow Older

As we age, we may suffer from eating difficulties and there are various reasons for this. After the appropriate medical specialists identify the causes for the eating difficulties, they will provide the appropriate solutions to help prevent nutritional deficits and maintain health. 

Prevalent reasons of eating difficulties:

Mood changes

Older adults experience depression, anxiety, and agitation, and these may emerge as sleep disorders and night-time wandering. These phenomena affect eating and food consumption and may lead to weight loss and nutritional deficits.

Emotional difficulties

Substantial events, such as illness, death of a spouse, death of a close person, or moving house, cause emotional difficulties, and as such, they may affect your appetite and your will to eat. Furthermore, loneliness and inactivity may also affect food consumption.

Dry mouth

A dry mouth, which characterizes older people, also contributes to difficulties in chewing and swallowing food. There are various causes for dry mouth in older adults: decreased saliva secretion, due, for example, to inadequate fluid intake, medication use, etc.; a change in the saliva composition making it thick and viscous, and the habit of mouth breathing and leaving the mouth open for a long time.

Changes to the taste and smell senses

As we get older, our mouth undergoes various changes. These changes cause a decrease in the number of taste buds that we have, and as a result, a reduced sensitivity to sweet and salty tastes develops, and inversely, there is a higher sensitivity to sour and bitter tastes. Therefore, older adults may prefer sweeter and saltier food, while many foods will become too bitter. For these reasons and others (for example, dry mouth, and poor oral cavity and teeth hygiene), food preferences may change, and you may prefer eating certain foods and avoiding others.

Oral cavity and teeth problems

Chewing and eating difficulties may have several underlying, problematic causes, making life difficult for older adults, including tooth ache, ill-fitting dentures, oral cavity infections (such as tongue fungus with a white layer or small sores on the tongue), gum inflammation, jaw pain, etc. It is important to understand that any sort of pain may affect your appetite and food consumption, therefore must be treated as soon as possible, after diagnosing the core reason for the pain and finding the best solution.

Illnesses, inflammations, and infections  

Illnesses and conditions such as urinary tract infection and pneumonia may cause body weakness, as well as appetite loss and difficulty swallowing.

Side-effects of medications

Some of the common medications for older adults may affect appetite and cause a lack of interest in food. For example, there are some medications that affect hunger and satiation, medications that make swallowing difficult, medications that make the digestive system slow down, medications that cause nausea or constipation, etc.

Constipation  

Constipation is a common issue among the elderly, in both men and women. Symptoms of constipation usually include abdominal pain, bloating and gas. Constipation may cause haemorrhoids and rectal bleeding due to straining when sitting on the toilet. These symptoms cause significant discomfort and lead to loss of appetite.