The power of chicken soup

Why we often only have an appetite for warm liquids in colds 

No one is immune to coughs, colds and hoarseness. Over 200 different viruses cause colds. They buzz around almost everywhere and can catch anyone whose defenses cannot defend themselves. An under-cooling alone does not cause the first scratching in the throat.

But who has “caught” an infection, freezes and shiver. When we have a cold, as the name says, we get cold - even in a heated room. There is an increasing need for peace, warm rooms and hot drinks.

So far, medicine has not found an effective way to shorten the duration of colds. To cure a cold, as the saying goes, takes a week with a doctor and seven days without him. The symptoms can be eased and the body’s own defence reactions supported. One of these reactions seems paradoxical at first glance because it makes us “weak”: It is the loss of appetite. It occurs because the organism is eager to starve out the viruses. This is also the reason it blocks away nutrients are already in the blood. Science calls this phenomenon “Nutritional Immunity”. It proves itself already with the simple cold. An investigation from Norway shows that with a cold, for example, part of the mineral iron is transported from the blood to the body’s iron stores. The colds that need this mineral to reproduce have no access there.

Many traditional household remedies support this strategy. They start by swallowing a lot of hot tea from herbs such as sage, thyme or rosemary, which provide little nutrients and also have a disinfecting or mucolytic effect - and go to the cooked chicken soup, whose recipe they find next door. Spooned hot, it allows the nasal mucous membranes to swell and the nasal secretion to drain off more. It also activates the immune system. American researchers have been able to prove - but so far only in the test tube - that it influences the formation of white blood cells and thus relieves the symptoms of colds. Chicken soup has another advantage: compared to beef or pork broth, it contains fewer minerals, less iron. Poultry meat has only half as much as beef or pork soup meat.

“Less” in nutrients can therefore sometimes be “more”. This need of the body wants to be taken seriously, with colds. Then the cold soon disappears - and the healthy appetite for all other delicious food regains itself.

Author: Brigitte Neumann

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