Blog > Helping Your Senior Stick with an Anti-Inflammatory Diet

Helping Your Senior Stick with an Anti-Inflammatory Diet

Does your elderly loved one deal with an inflammatory condition? It could be IBS, arthritis, or another condition that causes inflammation somewhere in the body. The problem is that moderate to severe inflammation generally causes pain. However, certain diets do help to reduce inflammation. Here are a few tips for helping your senior stick with an anti-inflammatory diet, and how in-home care can play a role as well.

Meal Prep

The first thing to know about anti-inflammatory diets is that sometimes they take quite a bit of prep work. Even if your elderly loved one wants to eat healthier, they may have trouble doing so due to all the preparation the meals need. You can either help or do the meal prep for them. If you can’t help as much as your elderly loved one needs, in-home care can help the other times.

Opting for Healthy Fats, Fruits, and Vegetables

Basically, all diets consist of similar foods – healthy fats, fruits, and vegetables. When you are making plans to prep or cook your elderly loved one’s food, these are foods you should stock up on. It may even be fun for you and your elderly loved one to look up recipes that have all 3 of these things in them. By looking up these recipes, your elderly loved one may even come across and like some foods they didn’t try before.

Healthy Snacks

Does your elderly loved one snack quite a bit? If so, and they generally eat junk food, you should encourage them to eat healthier snacks. You can even buy healthy snacks in bulk l, so your elderly loved one always has them.

Staying Hydrated

Another way that you can help your elderly loved one is by reminding them to stay hydrated. Some of the best ways for them to do this is by drinking bottles of water throughout the day, always having water in the morning, and taking water with them when they leave home.

Other Tips

In addition to the dietary tips above, it is also important for your elderly loved one to exercise, if they have been cleared by their doctor to do so. Studies show that when senior citizens combine regular exercise with a healthy diet, they have much less inflammation in their body.

Conclusion

It is important to encourage elderly loved ones to stay as healthy as they can with diet and exercise. With so many senior citizens experiencing chronic inflammation, this is definitely a health concern that you may want to learn more about.

Don’t forget that if your elderly loved one has inflammation that doesn’t get better with eating right and exercising, you should have them schedule and go to a doctor’s appointment. Hopefully, the doctor has other recommendations or treatments that help.

Sources
https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2019/diets-for-lowering-inflammation.html
https://www.endocrineweb.com/news/diabetes/60722-mediterranean-diet-anti-inflammatory-foods-behind-health-benefits