And changing gears now….
The Ministry of Health and Wellness is looking at the eating habits of elderly persons - as nutrition and diet are a major part of aging well.
The Ministry held a symposium today to see how they can provide that support to the aging population. Jomarie Lanza has more:
The Ministry of Health and Wellness held a Symposium to look at healthy aging and nutrition in partnership with the National Council on Aging, Helpage, The Mercy Clinic and other stakeholders. Nutritionist and coordinator for the event Robyn Daly told us how an event like this can help older persons to manage and prevent illnesses that may arise as they begin to age.
Robyn Daly, Nutritionist, MOHW
"As we look at the title and the objective for having this symposium as you know aging is a process it is inevitable we all have to age and we have also ton work with different age groups and different sectors in the community and many times we are looking at the adult population sometimes children, so we also have to cater our activities that will also cater to the elderly or the older persons population so we are looking at providing information, providing a medium where we can share what our entities are doing so what the ministry is doing what the council of aging is doing to support older persons or the elderly within our society and a big focus today is on nutrition because as you know it is very important as we look at managing disease and actually helping to prevent illness in older years when we see it most common."
The symposium also served as an educational fair for the attendees. They were able to learn more about healthy eating from the three different booths and they were also given a recipe book to help them plan and consume more nutritional meals. We asked Daly what are some of the most common deficiencies and diseases that can arise from a poor diet:
Robyn Daly, Nutritionist, MOHW
"So the leading cause of death no surprise is NCD's so we are looking at heart disease number one and diabetes is also up there at the top and so we are seeing high levels of iron, anemia we did not do further detail to see if it is iron deficiency anemia because there are different levels and anemia looks at having a low HB level so the HB level in the blood Is low but there is a lot you can do also looking at nutrition, what can you put in your diet more what can you consume more to prevent cases like this and to manage it so that will be shared a little bit in my presentation but so far those are the key causes of mortality and nutrient deficiencies affecting our older population."
The minister also spoke about the importance of including the older population in their national nutrition policy, and what kind of support they are providing for them.
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health & Wellness
"I think it is important for us to be here and at the same time to highlight the importance of looking at our population and stressing the for us to take care of our elder citizens but at the same time to promote healthy eating because you have to understand we all will get to that stage and we age every single day but we have to encourage and the ministry through its national nutrition policy has encouraged various steps whether starting from the healthy eating habits in the schools we are talking about putting legislations to deal with sugary food and drinks, trans fats and all of these things but all of these things have to start from a very early age and as it relates to now aging we have seen a lot of our population in the upper 60s that are suffering from hypertension, NCD's which is a burden in the health system, we need to ensure and educate them we need to ensure that we are able to provide that support."
