Coffee, vitamin K and physical limitations among older adults

Abstract

The aging population is a great challenge for modern societies, and therefore, ensuring healthy aging is essential to achieve a good quality of life in the elderly. Physical function impairment, frailty, disability and falls are major challenges facing the public health of the twenty-first century, as they compromise the quality of life of the elderly, increase the cost of the health system and increase the risk of adverse health outcomes. Lifestyles, such as diet and physical exercise, are modifiable factors that play an important role in the development of diseases, and therefore, knowing the dietary determinants that predispose to the public health problems mentioned above is important in order to design policies and strategies to prevent their development. This doctoral thesis aims to clarify the effect of habitual coffee consumption on the development of functional limitations, frailty and disability, as well as its effect on the risk of falls in elderly people, since coffee is the most consumed beverage in the world after water; therefore, any effect on health associated with this consumption have a high impact on the population. In addition, this thesis also analyzes the effect of vitamin K on frailty, measured with a plasma biomarker, which allows to take into account not only the intake, but also the biodisponibility of this vitamin. Therefore, this thesis covers two complementary approaches in Nutritional Epidemiology: the study of self-reported information on habitual diet and the study of biomarkers of nutients exposure