Multimorbidity means living with multiple diseases at the same time. These can be two or more conditions like heart disease, arthritis, dementia, chronic kidney disease or mental health conditions. It is estimated that about a quarter of GP patients in the UK have multimorbidity, and it is predicted that by 2035 about 2/3 of adults over 65 will be affected. This poses a challenge and burden for our health and social care system and threat to people’s wellbeing. In order to rise to the challenge of multimorbidity, more knowledge and research is needed to develop care approaches which address individual combinations of diseases and their complexities.
A common underlying reaction of our bodies in both multimorbidity and individual long-term conditions like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes or dementia is chronic inflammation. However data on its role within multimorbidity or health behaviour is limited. At the same time the risk of having multimorbidity is linked to common lifestyle risk factors, like obesity, poor nutrition and diet, smoking and alcohol consumption. These lifestyle factors have also been linked to chronic inflammation in previous research. The link to diet-dependent factors, shows the need for more research into the role of nutrition in multimorbidity. Further knowledge is also needed around social determinants of health. These are the conditions of people’s environment, e.g. where they are born, live, go to work learn and grow old and how they affect the presence and risk of multimorbidity, and interact with people’s diets and so their impact on multimorbidity.
To our knowledge the specific role of plants and plant-based diets have not yet been investigated in relation to inflammation and multimorbidity but these have the potential to serve as a prevention strategy that could address common clusters of multimorbidity. The quality of diets and different foods and chemicals they contain can be quantified with different scores, for example with a phytochemical index (PI), or the plant-based diet index (PDI) or the “a priori healthy diet score”. More knowledge around qualities of plant-based diets has the potential to not only address the burden of disease but is also a potential strategy for addressing climate change by reducing the impact of our food system on the planet.
