Anorexia :Can be a most deadly mental illness. It is not always about women seeking pencil slim figures!It can also affect senior citizens who have food problems along with for various health problems.

By Tara Narayan

FUNNY or not funny. Since I’ve been doing considerable toing and froing from the Goa Medical College & Hospital lately I’ve been thinking anew of food – and how these Sodexo guys and girls would bring early morning ragi malt, milk (powdered), a more or less clear consommé-styled soup…a lot of it by of liquid diet if recommended for patients unable to tolerate solid food like pau-egg-some lentil curry/upma-egg-tea/idli-egg-sambar/vermicelli upma/egg/tea…all for breakfast; and standard chapatti-rice-dal-sabzi-salad (the cucumber-coconut sliver one is simply delicious) and ditto for dinner more or less.
The really sick patients do not eat, the ones with healthy appetites although their limbs may be up in plaster post-accident in the wards, enjoy their meals to the last crumb! Of course there’s some kind of covert scramble for the standard meals which patients don’t eat…soon the Sodexo guys know which patient is interested and who is not and the meals disappear. I have no idea of how much of the GMC’s Sodexo food is leftovers and junked and I wonder why the untouched pau and eggs may not be given away to NGO groups in Goa who’re seeking food augmentation for the growing number of dropouts or homeless they pick up from the streets to salvage and restore to some sense of dignity and confidence anew…the waste and want of our urban homes just bugs.
At home too I cook, cook and hoard in the fridge to eat leftovers for the next day and day after next; while cooking fresh for someone at home who refuses to eat out of the fridge on principle! There are so many foodie fads and nonsense in life and what to eat and what to avoid to manage body beautiful … that I’m surprised we’re a nation now being riddled with obesity on one hand, while the many still starve for want of a quality meal a day. So much for 75 years of amrit mahotsav, for whom!
LATELY, I’ve discovered that senior citizens with health issues usually want to eat less and less – this is partly because they have eating problems vis-à-vis ill-fitted dentures and can’t chew and perennially want soft, carb-filled sweet foods easily swallowed; as patients lose weight for a collection of reasons even the oral cavities suffer for want of exercise and more nutritious food for fighting health.
It is something we do not see in family after family where seniors do not want to complain or be a burden on their sons and daughters busy with their packed lives. That or we just take seniors’ complaints lightly. I have just realized that it is not just women who suffer from these psychological eating conditions called anorexia nervosa or bulimia and yes, either of these conditions can trigger gradual bone loss and other manifestations of a starving body…
We hear these horror stories of young women wanting to remain as slim as a wand or drumstick or slender bamboo for beauty’s sake. In nervosa bulimia we have heard of celebrities hogging on their favourite foods and then bringing it all out as vomit! They remain slim but with no food digested for energy and storage they do go into malnutrition, low immunity and become vulnerable to a host of health issues. Also, if you live in anxiety and high stress conditions the chances are we’re almost around the clock on adrenal alert and with the stress hormone cortisol running down our nervous system….all of it in the end can result in osteoporosis which I understand is the precursor of osteoporosis, namely brittle bones and fractures. It happens in the elderly very often but also happens to young people with more style than common sense!
And sadly, it happens to seniors who for a myriad reasons may cut down on their food intake or take to eating food empty of nourishment just because it is soft and easy to swallow – no need to chew. In the old days I remember a grandmother who chewed without dentures in her senior years, by just telling her bahu to crumble the afternoon’s “rotli” or phulka in a bowl of sweetened milk and give it to her for dinner. For lunch too a phulka soaked in a savoury dal is easy to eat and good to live on. Then there would be regular softies like a ghee-laced sheera or doodhpak or shrikand on occasions and other treats soft enough to enjoy and eat without dentures…sometimes gums get tough enough for seniors to chew on thepla! My mother used to do it.
In my experience I have found that women are more accommodating and adjusting than men in their senior years! If you have elderly patients at home who are shying away from food check them out for dentures first, then check them out for needlessly stupid ideas in their mind and reassure them that death comes when it is destined to come and one may not wish it upon oneself at will for reasons from A to Z. I have some fascinating seniors citizens stories to tell but will keep for another time here.
BUT I write all this to make out a case for sanatoriums for elderly care and not hospitals where treatments can be aggressive and contraindicated. I know Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a pittance of a budget for healthcare in this country, but I imagine the budget for AYUSH Ministry is huge and wasteful…it would be in the fitness of things with an increasingly elderly population, that we have separate hospitals for them and complementary AYUSH sanatoriums attached. This is more important if you love your elderly patients and seek their votes to stay in power!
I’ve been in and out of hospitals quite a bit and I can tell you most of the seniors waiting to die in public and geriatric wards are really in need of quality alternative healthcare treatment along with whatever essential medicines they may need from mainstream Allopathy…TLC means a proper warm water bath, a massage, an oil massage, a head massage, a mud bath, basking in the sun, floating in a shallow pool, complementary nutritious food and drink – natural and wholesome. Even their real ailments and depressions will varnish! I am not for incarcerating most of our elderly people in hospitals…if you know what I mean. When did anyone last do a study of senior citizens rusticating in a public hospital ward? Correct me if I have got it wrong here!

SOURDOUGH BREAD AGAIN

OKAY, switch subjects. I’ve written about the deliciousness of sourdough bread here before but here I go again. I mean so many folk are switching over to sourdough bread if they have to eat bread. Then I discovered Buland Shah who according to me makes the most agreeable sourdough bread in Panaji? He is not only a savvy architect but an entrepreneur with the mostest, for he has this quaintly named For the Record – Vinyl Bar, where you may actually play records of your choice from a collection (I haven’t seen yet!) … what took me to Jukebox near Maruti Temple and Phoenix Spring at Fontainhas is a search for sourdough bread.
Which apparently this retiring Buland Shah, a Guju boy from Ahmedabad, has fun specializing in along with other experiments with fermented foods. Say it is a passion to be happy. The music is part of all the ambience. I picked up a loaf of the seeded sourdough bread and loved it, he also does loaves of chedder and Mediterranean herbs and so on, depending on the day (usually Tuesday and Friday when he also supplies loaves to the OMO organic rations outlet further down Fontainhas)…well, Buland’s sourdough loaves are the best in town I’ve tasted and I like them because they are not so heavy duty . Plus, his boys slice the loaf neatly if you ask, it makes life easier. I’m pretty well hooked on this sourdough bread now.
Actually, it’s Buland’s Vinyal Bar and music room which attracts a lot of folk seeking music of old and the ambience, and the menu too which changes now and again; last seen I remember such things as cold pressed gingerade, cold pressed pineapple juice, tempura leaves, seaweed wedges, kimchi pizza, choris pizza, koji cured fish and more esoteric item numbers. I’m told some of the best feni cocktails may be found here! I haven’t spoken much with this young architect Buland Shah, who has been doing some eco-friendly projects in Goa for the last dozen or so years…but read somewhere that his Vinyl Bar was inspired by similar bars in Tokya.
He some kind of a gypsy jazz musician apart from his love for baking sourdough bread and cooking up meals redolent of fermented food. Picking up a sourdough loaf I asked him why he was into sourdough and fermented foods when he is an architect (reportedly he is doing the Kala Academy make-over too), he replied shortly, well, life can be tough! This is to say do check out his sourdough offerings and the Vinyl Bar at Fontainhas. One of these days I must pick up some friends and go.