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Elderly Need Warm-up to Face Food Hazards
Asahi Shimbun
Japan
May 24, 2005
The figure 8,570 bothers Yoshiharu Mukai, a professor at the Showa University School of Dentistry. This is the number of people who choked on food and died during 2003.
That's more than 20 people a day, and most of them were 65 or older. Mukai specializes in oral hygiene and rehabilitation. "Aging causes muscles in your mouth to deteriorate," he said. "This prevents the proper swallowing of food. The food ends up getting into and blocking the trachea."
Mochi, the gooey rice cake eaten during the New Year's holidays, is the first thing I associate with choking on food. But mochi is definitely not the only hazard. According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Fire Department, ambulances respond to cases of choking all year.
A department official told me about a recent case. A man in his 80s fell unconscious while having a bowl of ramen noodles in a Tokyo eatery. An ambulance rushed to the scene, where a medic checked the old man and used a specially designed pair of tongs to dislodge a boiled quail's egg. The man regained consciousness before long.
"It's actually ordinary side dishes that are the most dangerous, more so than rice or mochi. In fact, mochi is the least dangerous of the three," the official noted. In other words, any food improperly swallowed can pose a potential hazard to the elderly.
In Nagoya, a nursing home for the elderly was taken to court for serving konnyaku and hanpen for a meal. The former has a tough, gummy texture, and the latter clings to the inside of the mouth like a foamy sponge.
A 75-year-old resident, who was being fed these items by a staff member, choked to death. The court ordered the home to pay damages to the man's family, noting that anyone should know the risk of serving these items to the elderly. The nursing home appealed. The case was settled at an appeal court last month.
Mukai recommends that older people do a little "oral workout" before they eat-a combination of movements including opening the mouth wide and then shutting it, and sticking out the tongue as far as it will go.
"It's a stretching exercise for your mouth," Mukai said.
I tried it, and when I opened my mouth really wide, I felt I was all ready to tuck into my meal.
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