With age, the appetite seems to decrease and sometimes even disappears. This phenomenon could be explained by the action of a hormone that modifies the desire to eat in seniors, according to the results of a study published in the medical journal Appetite.
Researchers at Plymouth University in the UK conducted a study with 31 volunteers aged 29 to 92 to understand the mechanisms of loss of appetite in seniors.
With aging, there is often a loss of appetite, called anorexia of aging, which can lead to undernutrition. “We don’t know how appetite control changes with aging and the aim of this study was to determine if there were differences in the release of gastrointestinal appetite hormones between young people and young people. older people, ”says Mary Hickson, study co-author and professor of dietetics at Plymouth University.
The appetite of seniors transformed by an increase in the concentration of a hormone
After several hours of fasting, the participants had to eat breakfast according to their appetite. Their levels of two hormones ghrelin and peptide YY were measured at regular time intervals for three hours. Ghrelin is the hormone that tells us when we are hungry.
The results of this analysis showed that the blood concentration of YY peptide increased in the elderly, on the other hand the level of ghrelin remained stable.
If the results of this study are interesting, they should be verified with a greater number of seniors.
“We had difficulty finding participants over the age of 80 who did not suffer from health problems. Indeed it was important to be able to attribute with certainty the observed measurements to aging, and not to any pathology, ”explains Mary Hickson, co-author of the study and professor of dietetics at Plymouth University.
“If further studies with larger numbers of participants show increased PYY production, we can work to investigate this hormonal imbalance to respond, and hopefully to combat anorexia with aging.”
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