"Grandpa, you have to control the amount of food, you can't eat so much, eating too much is not good for your health. ”
The grandfather who was eating retorted: "Others say that it is a blessing to be able to eat, many old people have a bad appetite, and they can't eat if they want to, I eat three bowls of rice per meal, and my health is not good." "Uncle Zhang is 62 years old this year, and the neighbors around him say that he is healthy, not because of anything else, it is precisely because he can eat, and there are very few people in the community who eat so much at his age. Uncle Zhang can eat three bowls of rice per meal, and sometimes four bowls of rice, and the family also thinks that it is a blessing to be able to eat, and they don't care how much he eats.
Only Xiao Zhang would talk about his grandfather every time he came back and saw him eating so much, but grandpa had never heard of it and still ate too much.
On this day, Xiao Zhang happened to swipe an article on his mobile phone, the title of which reads "The amount of food eaten by the elderly in their later years is related to their longevity", and the article mentions a number of experiments on the relationship between the amount of food and life expectancy of the elderly in their later years, and the results show that the excessive amount of food in the elderly will affect the life expectancy and increase the risk of disease.
Xiao Zhang immediately took his mobile phone to show Uncle Zhang, and said bitterly: "Grandpa, you really can't eat more, you will get sick if you eat too much." Uncle Zhang was also the first time to see Xiao Zhang so serious, so he hurriedly agreed. Although Uncle Zhang promised well, Xiao Zhang was still not at ease, for fear that his grandfather would have some disease, and wanted to take his grandfather to the hospital for a systematic examination.
Except for a somewhat high blood pressure, there was nothing wrong with the other results. After listening to Xiao Zhang's explanation, the doctor also said to Uncle Zhang: "Uncle, being able to eat is not necessarily a blessing, it is best to eat healthily and scientifically, you have to listen to your grandson, the elderly really can't eat more." ”
Xiao Zhang was still skeptical, but now that the doctors have said so, Uncle Zhang also knows that eating like this will cause problems, and he thinks that he will never dare to eat more in the future.
As the saying goes, being able to eat is a blessing, being able to eat, eating a lot is good, and most people think this way, especially the elderly, so everyone will not associate the amount of food with life expectancy. Whether there is a relationship between the amount of food and the life expectancy of the elderly in their later years, today we will take the example of Uncle Zhang to gain an in-depth understanding of how much the elderly should eat in their later years, how to eat to be healthy, and to live a long life.
1. Is the amount of food eaten by the elderly in their later years related to their life expectancy?
The elderly often reduce the amount of food due to a variety of reasons, such as as with age, the function of the digestive system gradually declines, the intestinal peristalsis slows down, the hunger is reduced, and the amount of natural food will be reduced, and some elderly people will lose their teeth due to age, unable to chew food completely, and the amount of food will also be reduced.
Digestive tract diseases, such as gastritis, gastric cancer, chronic diseases such as diabetes, etc., will have varying degrees of impact on appetite, and some drugs will also have gastrointestinal side effects, which indirectly affect the appetite of the elderly, resulting in a decrease in the amount of food.
Due to these reasons, it is common for the elderly to reduce the amount of food, so the elderly of Uncle Zhang's age, with a good appetite and a large amount of food, will only be praised by family members or others, indicating that they are healthy, but in fact, they ignore the harm of large meals.
A 20-year observational study conducted at the University of Wisconsin found that the mortality rate of uncontrolled monkeys was three times higher than that of monkeys who controlled the amount when eating, and the mortality rate was as high as 37 percent, which was three times higher. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America has also shown that whether it is young or old, if you change your high-calorie diet to a low-calorie diet in your daily life, you can effectively prolong your life and maintain good health.
These studies can show that the amount of food eaten in the elderly in their later years is related to their longevity, and being able to eat is not necessarily a blessing, but on the contrary, it will increase the risk of disease.
For example, obesity, this is only the lightest harm, a large amount of food, can not avoid high-fat and high-calorie food, the elderly physical activity is reduced, calories can not be consumed, transformed into layers of fat on the body. Fat is not terrible, what is terrible is a variety of diseases and complications caused by obesity, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, hyperlipidemia, and a variety of cardiovascular diseases.
Excessive food is easy to cause gastrointestinal diseases, the elderly have a decline in digestive function with age, once they eat too much, the burden of the gastrointestinal tract increases, the stomach is always in a full state, a large amount of gastric juice is secreted, and the gastric mucosa has no time to repair, and it is easy to cause serious diseases such as gastric ulcer and gastric erosion in the long term.
If there is a problem with the stomach, the intestines will also be affected, and a large amount of food fat will accumulate in the intestines, resulting in intestinal blockage, constipation, and bloody stools.
Young people will feel tired and groggy after eating too much, not to mention the elderly, this is because eating too much, the blood in the whole body is busy with gastrointestinal work, which leads to a decline in the working state of the brain, and the brain is sluggish, not only feeling fatigue and drowsiness, but also accelerating the aging of the brain in the long run.
Eating too much can also increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Some experts in Japan have found that eating too much for a long time in young adults will lead to Alzheimer's disease in old age, and the probability can reach 30%-40%. Scientists in Japan have also found that eating too much will affect the decrease in the activity of cell carcinogenesis, which will lead to a decrease in the body's immunity, and once cancer cells find an opportunity to invade, it will increase the risk of cancer.
It can be seen that being able to eat is not necessarily a blessing, and eating too much can easily lead to a variety of diseases, which is not conducive to physical health. So how should the elderly eat, how much is appropriate to eat, and then look down.
2. How should the elderly eat?
You can't eat too much, you can't eat too little, and eating until you are seven minutes full is the most ideal state.
However, many people don't know what kind of state it is to be full, some have to add meals after eating less, and some accidentally eat too much. Seven points of satiety should be able to continue eating if you feel not completely full after eating, but you can stop eating by taking the food away compared to the lower demand and enthusiasm for food when you first eat.
If you are hungry in advance between meals, it means that you have not eaten enough, and you have not yet reached seven points full, if you don't feel a trace of hunger when you should eat, and even have a sense of fullness, this means that the last meal has exceeded seven points of fullness, which requires us to constantly adjust ourselves, depending on the person, and try to find our own seven points of fullness.
Many people like to watch TV, look at mobile phones, or chat when eating, which leads to easy diversion of attention, for changes in satiety and weakened feelings, and you will eat too much if you are not careful, so it is recommended to eat attentively and consciously control the amount in order to eat until you are full.
Eating should be chewed slowly, this is a point that we often ignore, and when we feel hungry, we can't take care of it so much, and we start to gobble up food. Eating too fast will not only make it easy to eat too much, but also lead to an increase in the burden on the gastrointestinal tract and cause digestive tract diseases. Only by chewing slowly, slowly feeling the hunger subside, and the fullness brought by food, can you eat until you are full.
Moreover, compared with eating some fine and less fiber foods, eating foods with a lot of water, such as porridge, noodle soup, etc., is more conducive to controlling the amount of food, and eating coarse grains can slow down the chewing speed and help feel full. Therefore, we should not only pay attention to the amount of food, but also the type of food.
If the elderly want to live a long life, they should be full in the amount of food, and eating too much and eating too little is not conducive to their health. If the elderly want to live a long life, in addition to controlling the amount of food, they can also do more of these things in their daily life.
3. What else should the elderly do if they want to live a long life?
In addition to controlling the amount of food intake, we should also pay attention to the nutritional combination to achieve balanced nutrition.
Many elderly people eat only vegetarian diets and do not eat meat, claiming that they can live a long life by eating only vegetarian food. It is good to eat more foods rich in dietary fiber, but the fat and protein brought by meat are also indispensable for the human body.
The elderly who eat vegetarian food for a long time are prone to malnutrition, which is not conducive to physical health, so it is necessary to pay attention to the diversity of food and achieve balanced nutrition.
The elderly should carry out appropriate exercise, not that the elderly have inconvenient legs and feet, so they should lie in bed every day and not go out to exercise, many elderly people use this as an excuse to stay at home all day, and even start to use wheelchairs and other walkers. Healthy elderly people can do some simple exercises, such as walking, to promote blood circulation in the body, strengthen the movement of limb muscles and joints, which is the easiest way to promote health. Elderly people who are unable to walk and have physical disabilities should also actively carry out rehabilitation exercises, and they can also do more physical activities in bed to avoid muscle atrophy.
Older people should have a calm mind and pay attention to controlling their emotions. As they grow older, the elderly are facing diseases, as well as deaths that everyone avoids talking about, although they don't say it, but the elderly will have fear and fear in their hearts, so we should pay attention to relax our minds and not be too anxious about this matter. The elderly should avoid emotions such as anger, irritability, and sadness, as excessive mood swings can easily lead to the occurrence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
Summary: Uncle Zhang eats a lot of food, which is a good thing in the eyes of many people, and it is a blessing to be able to eat, but in fact, he is invisibly consuming his life. There is an inevitable relationship between the amount of food and life expectancy in the elderly, and reducing the amount of food eaten can effectively prolong the life expectancy. In addition, if the elderly want to live a long life, they should develop good habits, pay attention to nutritional matching, exercise appropriately, maintain an optimistic attitude, and face life positively.
Bibliography:
Food and Health,1998,(09):24.
[2] Li Jun, .The problem of "longevity and unhealth" of the elderly is to be solved[N].Health News