STUDIES IN OLD AGE

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The digestion of the aged has received but little attention in the literature. There is, however, a common belief among the medical profession and the public that disturbances of digestion are associated with a faulty dietary, and restriction of diet and special diets have therefore been the vogue for the aged. Much of what is accepted seems to be based on fear and habit rather than on basic experimental observations. It is also known that gastrointestinal symptoms are common in the aged while organic diseases of the gastrointestinal tract are relatively uncommon. According to Rivers,1indigestion is a complaint of half of the patients between the ages of 30 and 60, and Barker2and his associates have studied the case histories of 300 patients past 60 years of age and noted that digestive symptoms were second highest in frequency; they found that despite the high incidence of digestive

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: