ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Despite the lack of domestic research, eating alone has been reported to be related to depression. We investigated correlation between eating alone, and depression, among women age 65 and older.METHODS: Among women registered in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, 1,119 elderly in 2014, and 1,189 in 2016, were analyzed. Eating alone and the degree of depression were assessed, using a questionnaire and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 respectively. The relationship between eating alone and depression, was analyzed using multilevel logistic regression.RESULTS: In 2014 data, eating alone had significant effect on depression, as the explanatory power is increased to 30.4% in a ‘three meals eating alone a day’ group (β=0.128, p < 0.05), when the eating alone parameter is added to demographic factors and health characteristics. In 2016, exploitation of ‘the frequency of eating alone’ variable led to increment of explanatory power to 22.3%, that was not statistically significant.CONCLUSION: The result of this study suggests that eating alone among women age 65 and older, was a risk factor of depression in 2014, and is becoming a new life pattern as a social and cultural phenomenon in 2016.
Subject(s)
Aged , Female , Humans , Demography , Depression , Eating , Korea , Logistic Models , Meals , Nutrition Surveys , Risk FactorsABSTRACT
Objective:To explore the subjective well-being and its influencing factors of female elderly in ur-ban community in Shandong province. Methods: Used the multi-stage stratified sampling method to extract 449 elderly women in 6 communities of 18 cities in Shandong Province. The basic situation and Subjective well-being of their were investigated by using the self-designed questionnaire and Memorial University of Newfoundland Scale of Happiness ( MUNSH) . Results:The economic situation, the number of children, living conditions, self-care ability, chronic disease severity, and other variables have a significant effect on the subjective well-being of fe-male elderly. Conclusions:To improve the economic situation of the urban community elderly women, pay atten-tion to their physical and mental health level, improve the pension and health insurance system, intensify the con-struction of old-age care institutions, playing the roles of family, children, society in the network to support the community elderly women society, can significantly improve the community elderly women′s subjective well-be-ing.
ABSTRACT
Recently, we found and analyzed vitamin B12 in some Korean traditional plant foods which had not reported, yet. This study was to investigate vitamin B12 intake and its dietary sources and the vitamin B12 status in the very old elderly Koreans. We measured serum vitamin B12 level and estimated the amounts of vitamin B12 intake from different dietary sources in female elderly Koreans aged 85 and over who had consumed a relatively low animal traditional diet for the whole life. The average age of the subjects (n = 127) was 98.0 years (85-108 years). The assessment on energy and nutrient intake involved a one-day 24-hour recall, and serum vitamin B12 concentration was measured by radioimmunoassay. Overall diet pattern was not different between the 85-99 yr-old group and centenarians, except centenarians were taking more dairy product. The average ratio of plant food to animal food consumption was 87.5:12.5 in weight. The average vitamin B12 intake of our subjects was 3.2 microg/day, and 52.7% of subjects consumed under estimated average requirement, 2.0 microg/day. On dietary source, 67.3% of dietary vitamin B12 was from meat, eggs and fishes and 30.6% was from plant foods, such as soybean-fermented foods, seaweeds, and kimchi. The average serum vitamin B12 concentration was 450.5 pg/mL, and low serum vitamin B12 (< 200 pg/mL) was found in 9.6% of subjects. Dietary vitamin B12 intake was significantly lower in subjects with low serum vitamin B12 (0.79 microg/day) than those with normal serum vitamin B12 (3.47 microg/day). There were no significant difference in vitamin B12 intake and its dietary sources and serum vitamin B12 level between the 85-99 yr-old group and centenarians. In conclusion, several plant-origin foods including seaweed, soybean-fermented foods, and kimchi, may contribute significantly to good vitamin B12 status in very old elderly Koreans.