The Elderly and Malnutrition
At any age, nutrition is vital to maintaining health and enhancing quality of life. However, achieving good nutrition can be especially difficult for the elderly, the fastest growing portion of America's population. Many factors, including physiological changes, changes in nutritional needs, illness and physical limitations, food-medication interactions, depression and loneliness, and food insecurity are common causes of malnutrition in the elderly. This paper will explore factors affecting elderly nutrition, provide suggestions for obtaining and maintaining good nutrition after age 65, and describe the services available to help the elderly meet their nutritional needs.
A number of factors influence the nutritional status of the elderly. First, several physiological changes impact elderly nutritional requirements. Changes in taste and smell may decrease an individual's appetite or desire for food. Gastro-intestinal motility decreases with age and may lead to constipation, decreased nutrient absorption, and a decrease in fat and protein absorption. Metabolism also slows with age; this results in a decrease of lean body mass and an increase in body fat (8). Lastly, bone mass decreases, leaving the elderly vulnerable to bone fractures from falls and osteoporosis.
Ultimately, these physiological changes result in different nutritional needs for the elderly. The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences issues the Recommended Daily Allowances for healthy people over the age of 51. However, these RDAs are limited in that they have been derived from studies of younger, healthy populations and do not account ...
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A Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) was completed on Anne. The MNA is a tool used to provide a rapid assessment of elderly patients’ nutritional status. The MNA is made up of simple measurements and a few brief questions that can be completed by the patient in no more than ten minutes. The nutritional status of a patient is evaluated using a two-step process to accurately determine a patient’s nutritional status (McGee
Jacobsen, L. A., Kent, M., Lee, M., & Mather, M. (2001). America's aging population. Population Bulletin, 66(1).
Robert Frost is often known as one of the greatest American poets of all time. Although he is sometimes remembered as hateful and mean spirited, his life was filled with highs and lows. These differentiating periods are represented throughout his poetry. Frost once said that “A poem begins in delight, and ends in wisdom.” As can be seen, this quote not only reflected his poetry, but his life. Though many years of his life were troubled by misfortune, Frost always seemed to persevere. Robert Frost was a talented, thoughtful poet whose life was filled with complexity and tragedy (brainyquote.com).
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Frost’s sentence structure is long and complicated. Many meanings of his poems are not revealed to the reader through first glance, but only after close introspection of the poem. The true meanings contained in Frost’s poems, are usually lessons on life. Frost uses symbolism of nature and incorporates that symbolism into everyday life situations. The speaker in the poems vary, in the poem “The Pasture”, Frost seems to be directly involved in the poem, where as in the poem “While in the Rose Pogonias”, he is a detached observer, viewing and talking about the world’s beauty. Subsequently, the author transfers that beauty over to the beauty of experiences that are achieved through everyday life.
The mission of the Department of Correctional Services is to serve and protect the public by providing control, humane care, and program opportunities for those individuals placed in its custody and supervision, thereby facilitating their return to society as responsible persons (“Nebraska” par 1).
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Nutrition assessments include clinical and dietary assessment, anthropometrics, as well as biochemical, laboratory immunologic and functional indices of nutritional status (Gibney, 2005). In epidemiological studies, different dietary investigation tools were designed to assess the nutritional status in individuals and populations, nutrition monitoring and surveillance and diet-disease research (Friedenreich, et al., 1992, Taren, 2002).
Disabled workforce has been another untapped resource, particularly since their talents have often been underestimated. The stigma played a key role for them to enroll in separate courses from their peers in secondary schools that merely prepares them for lower paying jobs. Such practices not only limited their access to higher quality education, but opportunities to prove prospective employers that they are competent in handling knowledge-based jobs. Such miscalculations are causing employers and business leaders to disregard many of disabled Americans that are actually capable of working in high growth markets, thus, solving the skill shortage crisis. “Nearly 13 percent or more than 22 million working age adults in the United States have a disability, according to 2006 statistics” (Heldrich 2008). There may be an increasing percentage of disabled workforces who will be seeking job positions; yet, their representation in the workforce is in jeopardy of decreasing as the economy becomes more complex. “Nearly 38 percent of working age adults with a disability were employed compared to nearly 80 percent of individuals without disabilities” (Heldrich 2008). Possible candidates with intellectual disabilities may face more obstacles because their limited mental capacity will label them as not having the potential of handling the challenges of 21st century workforce. “The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines people with intellectual disabilities as meeting the following three criteria: 1) Intellectual functioning level (IQ) below 70-75; 2) Significant limitations in adaptive skills – the basic conceptual, social and practical skills needed for everyday life; and 3) Disability began before age 18” (Kauffman 2007). ...
Prison within the society in America has sharply veered towards the idea of mass incarceration. The Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) is a criminal research group that reports on the quantity of people in the United States that are in the prison system, and in 2014 “PPI reckons the United States has roughly 2.4m people locked up, with most of those (1.36m) in state prisons” (J.F. 1). This number is cause for concern when compared to a study of recidivism released among thirty states in 2005 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) According to BJS, “About two-thirds (67.8%) of released prisoners were arrested for a new crime within 3 years, and three quarters (76.6%) were arrested within 5 years” (BJS 1). The concern is that rehabilitation programs in the United States are not effectively working to introduce an inmate into the general population. The reason inmates are typically repeat offenders is because the United States focuses more on punishment than rehabilitation. While rehabilitation methods do exist, they are not the focus within American prison systems, the ones that do exist are more geared toward manual labor and teaching trades. While this an effective means to teach a skill, this style of rehabilitation fails to address the ideas of empathy, accountability, and effective social interaction. The main focus of prisons in the United States is to maintain order in an inherently hostile environment so that inmates may ‘serve their time.’ The focus should be placed on educating inmates instead of strictly punishing those who are incarcerated.
Robert Lee Frost was a famous American poet who was always acknowledged for his vivid and unique writing style, which contributed tremendously into him becoming one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Throughout his life, Frost has written many amazing poems but like the majority of poets at that time, many of his poems from his early writings went unnoticed. He was known for following a very well organized structure for his writing, a great example for this would be: “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, which are two of Frost’s greatest pieces as they bring to the table all of his writing characteristics, ranging from the dominant figurative language that makes the poem vivid, to his flexible idealistic
“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on” (Frost). These are the words of Robert Frost who was born on March 26, 1874. He was raised by his mother alone since his father died from tuberculosis when Frost was just at the age of eleven. He wrote extravagant poetry as he went through many road blocks during his journey in England. His poetry is read by millions of people all across the world inspired by his in-depth meaning of life through nature. His role in the arts of literature remains well-known not only in American writing, but in different countries as well, as it is analyzed for the difference in structure. Robert Frost is a well-known poet who made a tremendous impression in American literature by overcoming his many hardships, writing various famous works of poetry, and inspiring many modern-day poets.
Frost spent much time in the country side, and seemed to have some appreciation for it natural raw state; most of his poetry is inspired by these natural surroundings. However for much of his adult hood, he lived in the city, which could have conflicted with his views on nature, since it was the peak of industrialization and the changing environment, new inventions and new machinery, which led to new human needs and unnecessary consumption. This also led to man’s new physiological state that conflicted with his place on earth, leading Frost to his inspirations for his poetry.