Adele Joaquin, burning with passion to raise awareness of "Bantay Matanda," is making up for lost time.

She’s in a hurry to build a center (that will cost no more than R150,000) and to air a series of TV shows, already in the can and waiting for sponsors who see the elderlies as a marketing niche. They need medicine, diapers, special foods, "accessories" like canes, walkers, wheelchairs, orthopedic beds.

Adele cannot wait to collar the sons and daughters of old-agers to teach them what she has learned from self-study, listening to the experts, and caring for her 82-year-old mother who has dementia.

A Bantay Matanda seminar last June was about Alzheimer’s disease. In July, the topic was "eat right to live right" (and longer?) from which I gleaned the following tips on the anorexia of aging and on food versus food supplements:

1. Old people often lose their appetite due to their medicines. Cheese does not go well with certain drugs.

2. In the elderly, vitamin E and anti-oxidants may delay blood-clotting but they also increase the risk of stroke and worsen rheumatoid arthritis. Some drugs cause diabetes. Vitamin C taken with iron can lead to iron overload.

3. Fresh fruits are better than pills, except to those who have no appetite. Cheaper, too, minus the substances in pills that are not needed or not good for the patient.

4. Some herbs in food supplements are toxic!

5. Look at lowly kangkong, it’s loaded with iron, fiber, carbohydrates, calcium, and more.

6. Regular physical activity as opposed to exercise is good enough for lola. No need to work out like Jane Fonda if she walks around the garden, parks the car a distance from where she’s going, uses the stairs.

7. The best source of Omega 3 is paksiw na bangus; forget the fish oil capsules.

To learn more about Bantay Matanda, contact Adele at tel. 373-2262 or Bantay_Matanda@yahoo.com.