With age, appetite seems to decrease and sometimes even disappear. This phenomenon could be explained by the action of a hormone which would modify the desire to eat in seniors, according to the results of a study published in the medical journal Appetite.
Researchers from the University of Plymouth 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 the anorexia of aging, which can lead to undernutrition. “We do not know how appetite control changes with aging and the aim of this study was to determine if there were any differences in the release of gastrointestinal appetite hormones between young and old. older people,” says Mary Hickson, co-author of the study and professor of dietetics at the University of Plymouth.
The appetite of seniors transformed by an increase in the concentration of a hormone
After several hours of fasting, the participants had to consume a breakfast according to their appetite. Their level of two hormones ghrelin and peptide YY was 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 peptide YY increased in the elderly, on the other hand the level of ghrelin remained stable.
If the results of this study are interesting, they must be verified with a larger 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 measurements observed to aging, and not to any pathology,” explains Mary Hickson, co-author of the study and professor of dietetics at the University of Plymouth.
“If further studies in larger numbers of participants show an increase in PYY production, we can work to investigate this hormonal imbalance to address, and hopefully combat, anorexia of aging.”
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