Malnutrition

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What Are the Common Causes and Risk Factors?

Understanding malnutrition seniors nutrition guide is important for seniors and their caregivers. there are many types of malnutrition, and they have different causes. Some causes include:

• Poor diet
• Starvation due to food not being available
• Eating disorders
• Problems with digesting food or absorbing nutrients from food (malabsorption)
• Certain medical conditions that make a person unable to eat

You may develop malnutrition if you lack a single vitamin in your diet. Lacking a vitamin or other nutrient is called a deficiency.

Sometimes malnutrition is very mild and causes no symptoms. Other times it can be so severe that the damage it does to the body is permanent, even though you survive.

Poverty, natural disasters, political problems, and war can all contribute to malnutrition and starvation, and not just in developing countries.

Some health conditions that are related to malnutrition are:

• Malabsorption

• Hunger

• Beriberi

• Binge eating

• Deficiency –

  Vitamin A

• Deficiency –

  Vitamin B1 (thiamine)

• Deficiency –

  Vitamin B2 (riboflavin)

• Deficiency –

  Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine)

• Deficiency –

  Vitamin B9 (folacin)

• Deficiency –

  Vitamin E

• Deficiency –

  Vitamin K

• Eating disorders (

  bulimia

  and

  anorexia

  )

• Kwashiorkor

• Megaloblastic anemia

• Pellagra

• Rickets

• Scurvy

• Spina bifida

Malnutrition is a significant problem all over the world, especially among children. It is very harmful to children because it affects brain development and other growth. Children who suffer from malnutrition may have lifelong problems.