A professor of medicine weighs in on the old wives tale, and discusses the fastest routes to recovery
Tom Wilkinson, professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Southampton, says there is some truth to this age-old saying. When you get a respiratory viral infection, otherwise known as a cold, your immune system is activated, he explains. Your ability to fight it off depends on how strong your system’s responses are – and you need to be fuelled up in order to respond well.
“Activated immune cells are among the most metabolically demanding – they take a lot of energy from the body,” Wilkinson says. That means you ideally need to be consuming nutrient-dense, calorie-rich foods. He refers to an experiment in which randomised volunteers were either given a liquid meal or starved for 24 hours. Those who were fed displayed a more robust immune system.
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