As individuals age, dietary choices become increasingly crucial for maintaining overall health and well-being. Nutritional supplements like Ensure and Boost can play a role in supporting seniors' nutritional needs, while liquid diets, in general, are sometimes used for weight loss or prescribed for medical reasons. This article explores the benefits and risks associated with liquid diets, including the use of Ensure, and provides guidance for making informed decisions about incorporating them into your health plan.
The Role of Nutritional Supplements Like Ensure and Boost
Ensure, founded in 1974, is a gluten-free nutritional drink designed to provide essential vitamins, minerals, calories, and macronutrients. Boost is another leading nutritional drink. These supplements can be beneficial for:
- Maintaining a Healthy Weight: They help seniors maintain a healthy weight and feel full.
- Addressing Decreased Appetite: As seniors age, it becomes more common to experience decreased appetite and weight loss, which these supplements can help counter.
- Supporting Those with Swallowing Difficulties (Dysphagia): They’re often gentler for those with dysphagia, providing essential nutrients without chewing.
- Supplementing Inadequate Diets: Ensure was developed to help those who struggle to put weight on or consume regular, well-balanced meals.
- Providing Accessible Nutrition: It is accessible to those with swallowing difficulties. Boost also helps individuals consume enough calories, nutrients, and vitamins.
Potential Risks of Relying Solely on Supplements
While supplements like Ensure and Boost offer convenience and concentrated nutrition, there are potential drawbacks to consider:
- Nutrient Overload: Ensure may be too jam-packed with nutrients for some seniors.
- Not a Substitute for a Balanced Diet: Supplements should complement, not replace, whole foods.
It's crucial to consult with a healthcare professional before incorporating these supplements into your diet to determine the appropriate amount and ensure they meet your specific needs.
Understanding Liquid Diets
As the name suggests, a liquid diet means you're getting all, or at least most, of your calories from drinks. There are different kinds of liquid diets, each with its own purpose and potential effects.
Read also: A Guide to Ensure Drinks
Types of Liquid Diets
- Clear Liquid Diet: This diet is often prescribed by doctors for a short duration, typically before a medical procedure or to address digestive issues. It includes only clear liquids and semi-liquids that are non-opaque, such as water, apple juice, tea, certain sports drinks, and broths. You won’t get the calories and nutrients you need with one of these diets, so you can’t be on them for long and shouldn’t do them without medical supervision.
- Full Liquid Diet: A full liquid diet is more inclusive than a clear liquid diet, allowing all types of liquids and semi-liquids. This includes items like popsicles, Jell-O, pudding, syrups, and some shakes. Patients not ready for a regular diet due to elective or emergent procedures or who experience irregularity in gastrointestinal function, dysphagia, a transition from prolonged fasted periods, etc., are typically placed on a restrictive diet. Dietary restrictions can be as restrictive as no food or liquids allowed by mouth, which may increase in a stepwise fashion until reaching regular nutrition. One step in that progression is a full liquid diet. A patient prescribed a full liquid diet follows a specific diet type requiring all liquids and semi-liquids but no forms of solid intake.
- Weight Loss Liquid Diets: Some individuals opt for liquid diets, typically limited to fruit or vegetable juices or shakes, for weight loss purposes. These drinks may replace all of your meals or just one or two meals (usually breakfast and lunch). You also get snacks on some of these plans.
Liquid Diets: Benefits and Risks
Liquid diets can work, like any diet that gives you fewer calories than you use. These diets can help by taking the guesswork out of portion control. They’re also beneficial if you have trouble chewing food.
Potential Benefits:
- Weight Loss: These diets can cut the calories you take in and can help you lose weight.
- Ease of Digestion: Clear liquids are typically easy to digest and do not leave much undigested material in your intestines.
- Post-Surgery Support: They may also be prescribed after certain surgeries, such as gallbladder removal and bariatric surgery.
Potential Risks:
- Nutrient Deficiencies: Missing out on essential nutrients can lead to side effects such as fatigue, dizziness, hair loss, gallstones, and heart damage.
- Muscle Loss: You also can lose muscle if you don't get enough protein calories in your diet.
- Constipation: Also, if you don't get enough fiber, because you're not eating whole grains, fruits and vegetables, you can get constipated.
- Metabolism Slowdown: When you drastically cut calories, your metabolism slows to save energy. Unless you change your eating habits, you're likely to regain the weight you lost after you go off the liquid diet.
- Gallstones: Very low-calorie diets (500 calories per day) may lead to a higher risk of gallstones than low-calorie diets (1,200-1,500 calories per day).
- Quality of Life: Full liquid diets can affect a patient's quality of life over time due to patient dissatisfaction with the taste of the diet when supplemented with nutrients, patient discomfort with the texture of the diet lacking solid food, and increased thirst depending on what full liquids the patient receives.
Important Considerations Before Starting a Liquid Diet
Talk to your doctor before you go on a liquid diet. You’ll need to make sure you get enough important nutrients, like fiber and protein.
- Medical Supervision: If your doctor prescribes you a liquid diet, they’ll go over what liquids you can have, and how long you should be on it. Make sure you follow their instructions carefully.
- Consult a Dietitian: If you want to go on one for weight loss, talk to your doctor first about whether a liquid diet is appropriate for you. If your doctor gives you the OK to go on one, you should also see a registered dietitian, who can go over it with you and make sure you're getting enough calories and nutrition. Your dietitian might recommend that you take a vitamin or nutritional supplement while you're on the liquid diet.
- Nutrient Intake: Before you choose a liquid diet plan, know what you're drinking. If you're considering one of the commercial diets, look at the daily values on the nutrition facts label. Be sure you're getting 100% of all the recommended vitamins and minerals.
- Protein and Fiber: Look for a diet that is not too low in calories and contains plenty of protein and fiber to keep you feeling full while you lose the weight gradually.
Who Should Avoid Liquid Diets?
Pregnant or nursing women, and people who take insulin for diabetes, or anyone with a chronic illness shouldn't go on a liquid diet.
Full Liquid Diets in the Perioperative Period
The main indication for a full liquid diet is in the perioperative period. This refers to the period around the time of the operation, including pre- and post-operative management. Other, more restrictive diets can be used during this time as well. Still, one added benefit of a full liquid diet is the higher amount of calories and added nutrients provided, which has links to fewer post-operative complications. This situation especially becomes an issue of importance for patients receiving surgery on any part of the gastrointestinal tract who are in any way immunosuppressed, such as a cancer patient.
Bozzetti et al. showed that the most significant postoperative complications in patients with gastric cancer included weight loss, advanced age, earlier surgery involving the pancreas, and lower serum albumin. Increasing amounts of nutritional support reduced postoperative complications. The best form of nutritional support for those patients was immune-enhanced, but results showed an increased protective effect against complications with increased nutritional support. Although more research is needed to confirm the implication, this and other studies imply the added benefit of a full liquid diet compared to its more restrictive counterparts in preventing malnutrition in even non-immunosuppressed patients.
Read also: Can Ensure Help You Lose Weight?
In abdominal surgeries for patients regardless of their immunosuppressive state, the typical dietary progression post-operatively begins with a clear liquid diet while recovering from anesthesia, followed by the full liquid diet, then a soft diet, and finally, regular dietary intake.
Addressing Specific Questions About Ensure Products
Many questions arise regarding the composition, usage, and suitability of Ensure products for various individuals. Here's a brief overview of some common inquiries:
- Ingredients: What ingredients are in Ensure drinks?
- Sugar Content: Are Ensure products sugar free? Are Ensure products for Diabetics?
- Lactose Intolerance: Are Ensure products Lactose Free?
- Weight Management: Does Ensure help you gain weight? Does Ensure help with weight loss?
- Gluten-Free: Are Ensure products Gluten-free?
- Preparation: Can Ensure products be warmed or frozen?
- Storage: Once opened, how long can Ensure products be kept out at room temperature? In the refrigerator?
- Mixing with Fruit: Can Ensure products be mixed with fruit? What impact does this have on the nutritional value?
For detailed answers to these and other questions about specific Ensure products, it's best to consult the product packaging, the manufacturer's website, or a healthcare professional.
Read also: Is a liquid diet right for you?