Feed a cold, starve a fever: How much does old-age wisdom REALLY work when sickness strikes?

September 8, 2016

Old age wisdom has it that you should not eat when you have a fever
Scientists at Yale found that is sound advice when fever is bacterial
It is particularly bad to eat sugary foods when you have a bacterial fever, they found; protein and fats are better options if you have to eat

Mia De Graaf For Dailymail.com

Published:
11:06 EST, 8 September 2016

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Updated:
11:06 EST, 8 September 2016

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Grandma’s advice to ‘feed a cold and starve a fever’ might have an element of truth, scientists claim.

New research shows that the old adage appears to be based on sound science when a fever is caused by bacterial infection.

Scientists put the folk wisdom to the test using laboratory mice with bacterial and viral infections.

Feed a cold, starve a fever? The adage appears to be based on sound science, research says

COLD AND FEVER MEAL PLAN

COLD

You want to consume plenty of liquid and nutrients.

Drink: water, decaffeinated tea, fresh juice, lemon and ginger in hot water

The key is to replenish the fluid in your body as the infection will leave you dehydrated. Ginger and lemon do wonders to reboot the immune system

Eat: chicken soup, spicy food

Chicken contains an amino acid called cysteine which helps dilute mucus, while spice helps with decongestion

FEVER

When you need food, you should still eat. Just don’t eat your way through your sickness. Most important: avoid sugary foods.

Drink: water, water, and more water

Eat: small portions of chicken, probiotics like yogurt, and fresh fruit

They found that mice with flu – like the common cold, caused by a virus – were helped to recover and survive when they were fed.

In contrast, feeding animals infected by bacteria only hastened their death.

Lead researcher Professor Ruslan Medzhitov, from the Yale School of Medicine in the US, said: ‘We were surprised at how profound the effects of feeding were, both positive and negative.

‘Anorexia – not eating – is a common behavior during sickness that is seen in people and all kinds of animals.

‘Our findings show that it has a strong protective effect with certain infections, but not with others.’

In the first of a series of experiments, mice were infected with Listeria bacteria – a common cause of food poisoning.

The animals stopped eating naturally, and eventually recovered.

However, when they were made to eat, they died.

Sugary food was the culprit, the researchers discovered – the mice survived when they were fed protein and fats but no glucose.

A similar study of mice infected with the flu virus showed an opposite effect. In this case, the mice lived when they were force-fed glucose, but died when they were denied food.

Giving the animals a drug called 2-DG, which prevents glucose metabolism, saved the Listeria-infected mice but proved fatal to those with flu.

Further research indicated that the different outcomes related to an interplay between metabolism and the immune system.

‘Almost everything we know about infection is based on immune response studies and looking at how the immune system eliminates pathogens (harmful agents),’ said Prof Medzhitov.

‘But that’s not the only way we defend ourselves. There are also cases where we change and adapt so that microbes don’t cause harm.

‘Our study manipulated the ability of these mice to tolerate and survive infection without doing anything that had an effect on the pathogens themselves.’

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His team is now looking at how changes in sleep behaviour during illness influence the way the immune system fights infection.

The researchers also want to investigate why people sometimes display food cravings when they are sick.

The new findings, published in the journal Cell, have implications for the design of clinical trials evaluating the benefits of nutrition to patients with sepsis, say the scientists.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a response to infection that damages the body’s tissues and organs.