Abstract
Adequate protein intake per day has been associated with a lower risk of physical disability; however, if adequate protein intake per meal is also associated is unknown. The purpose of this study was to analyze the association between adequate protein intake per meal and physical disability in daily living activities in Mexican adults aged ≥60 years. We assessed the number of meals per day with an adequate protein content (24 h dietary recall), the presence of physical disability in daily living activities (two validated questionnaires), and their association in 187 participants through logistic regression. Consuming two or three meals per day with ≥30 g each was associated with lower risk of physical disability on Transportation (OR [95% CI]: 0.06 [0.01–0.50], p = 0.01), Shopping (0.05 [0.01–0.40], p = 0.004), Feeding (0.06 [0.01–0.74], p = 0.028), and Transfer (0.09 [0.01–0.98], p = 0.048). On the other hand, consuming two or three meals per day with ≥0.4 g/kg each was associated with lower risk of physical disability on Shopping (0.21 [0.05–0.89], p = 0.034) and Transportation (0.12 [0.03–0.48], p = 0.003). The consumption of two or three meals per day with adequate protein content is associated with lower risk of physical disability in Mexican adults aged 60 years and older.
Highlights
The age-related decrease in muscle mass in humans begins in the fifth decade of life [1,2,3].This muscle mass loss often coexists with low muscle strength [4,5], functionality [6,7], and higher disability [8,9], which in turn are related with lower quality of life [10,11], and higher healthcare expenses [12], and mortality [13,14,15]
We observed that consuming two or three meals per day with ≥30 g protein each was significantly associated with lower physical disability risk for two instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) items and two activities of daily living (ADL)
Eating one meal with this protein content was associated with one IADL item only (Figure 1)
Summary
The age-related decrease in muscle mass in humans begins in the fifth decade of life [1,2,3].This muscle mass loss often coexists with low muscle strength [4,5], functionality [6,7], and higher disability [8,9], which in turn are related with lower quality of life [10,11], and higher healthcare expenses [12], and mortality [13,14,15]. Physically active older adults and those engaged in exercise programs show higher functionality and lower physical disability than their less physically active counterparts [16,17,18,19,20,21]. Dietary factors, such as low dietary protein. Geriatrics 2020, 5, 1 intake, are associated with these outcomes, whereas older adults who consume higher amounts of protein have been reported to have higher muscle mass [22,23], better functionality [24,25] and lower disability [26,27] in some studies. The PROT-AGE study group recommended that older adults should consume at least 1.0 to 1.2 g protein /kg body mass/day to maintain or gain muscle mass and function [28]
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