Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

You know that old adage that you should feed a cold but starve a fever? It’s an ancient idea and what’s surprising is that it’s kind of correct. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey and welcome to The Short Stuff. There's Chuck and I'm Josh and Jerry's here too sitting in for Dave. So this is Short Stuff. That's right. I call it Old Wives Tale Edition because this is about feeding a cold and starving a fever, which is the old wives tale that when you have a cold, you should originally start it out as stuff a cold. Like eat as much as you can, and then if you have a fever, you should try and not eat very much at all.

Yeah. I think most people have heard that, right? That's a pretty widespread adage. Sure. Our friends at the Cleveland Clinic, not normally known for their etymology resources, but they traced this back at least half of it to 1574. There's a dictionary that was compiled by a guy named John Withells. And Withells said that fasting is a great remedy of fever. So you've got the second

part right there, starve of fever, right? It's as far back as anyone's traced it. Although, if you kind of want to expand your definition of what's being discussed here, you can trace it all the way back to Hippocrates, right? Yeah, I'm not sure about this one. He said the most exquisitely slender diet you should have when the disease is very sharp. So, not quite sure what disease he's talking about there.

So I'm not sure if that counts. No, but I mean just that phrase, most exquisitely slender diet sounds awesome. So I thought it was worth putting in there. Yeah, for sure. If you look at the current use of the term, as we know and love it, it came about in the 18th century, pretty late in 18, oh, I guess kind of mid, in 1853. That's when they were talking about feed and starve as far as cold and fever go.

What's weird, Chuck, is I saw that it was this whole adage that we, that is like basically encouragement, taken as an encouragement or advice today, was originally taken as like a warning that if you feed a cold, that cold will turn into a fever, and then you'll have to starve the fever. Like, and that the reason that it was ambiguous is because of that comma in the middle. Yeah, you know, that has proved to me that people back then were dumb.

A little bit. I don't get that one, but sure, okay. But well, what was the whole point? I mean, like if, what was the idea that it was based on, I guess then? Yeah, what was the whole point? I mean, like, if the, what was the idea that it was based on, I guess, then? Yeah, I guess they were basing it on, if you have a fever, then you don't wanna eat hot food. I guess they didn't eat a lot of cold foods back then.

I guess not. And if you're cold, you wanna warm yourself up because there was only hot food available? Sure, that was, I think, what they think the whole thing was based on. And regardless of how you slice it though, how you take it as a warning or anything like that, it's pretty much generally viewed as not good advice by the medical community today. I say we take a break and come back and talk about how this is not really good advice. How about that?

All right, let's do it. Okay, so people have basically always said that this was a bad idea. There was a writer in Gentleman's Magazine in 1785 that said it was perhaps more destructive to mankind than the plague itself, this advice, which is definitely overstating things. But people these days say, no, that's not good advice. First of all, if you have a cold, you may not want to eat very much. You may not be very hungry. So, like, for God's sake, don't just make someone stuff themselves full just because they're sick with a cold. It's not going to do anything for you. Now, and that's bad enough, but the actual harm is in the second part,

starving a fever, because pretty much everybody in the medical community agrees that if you feel hungry while you're sick, you should go ahead and eat, because your appetite can come and go and it can be so thin, you wanna take advantage of it when it does show up. And even more to the point, if you starve yourself on purpose come and go and it can be so thin, you want to take advantage of it when it does show up.

And even more to the point, if you starve yourself on purpose while you have a fever, you're robbing yourself of some really much needed nutrients and calories that your body really needs specifically when you have a fever. Yeah, if your metabolism is kicking in in a substantial way, it's going to, you know, if you're just laying around in bed, that'll make you eat up more of your calories and nutrients than you, that you have in your body. So you're gonna want as much as you can. So if you're hungry, cold, fever or whatever, by God, eat something or drink something. You definitely need to stay hydrated even if you're not hungry. There are plenty of ways to get, you know, nutrients

and liquid into you. Right. And the reason that your metabolism would jack up when you have a fever is because your body's literally raising your core temperature to try to cook out the virus that's got you in its grips. Pretty neat. Yeah. I think fevers are no fun, but I love when I'm sick

and I get a fever and the fever happens, I'm like, okay, this is my body doing its thing. So I feel good about it. Yeah, yeah, it is kind of weird. It's like almost giving it like a grudging salute, like way to go body. Exactly, it didn't feel great, but oh, there's no better feeling

than breaking that fever. Oh, for sure. The worst is when the fever comes on in the morning and you've got fever all through the night. No. Fever. Is that, okay. So I just wanna make sure that wasn't an accident.

You said, can you imagine the coincidence? What would the odds be of that? I don't know. It'd make you a natural songwriter, I guess. So you said that you wanna drink, especially if you can't eat solid foods, at least try to drink things that have calories like a sports drink with electrolytes, like they had in idiocracy. And or like thin broths like a chicken broth can have a bunch of calories in it. Even vegetable broths have some calories. So you want to get it wherever you can. The key here is this, even if you don't want to eat at all, that's okay. Like most people, especially in the developed world, aren't on the edge of nutrition. We all have

some reserves that can last us the few days we're not hungry while we're sick. What we don't have is a reserve enough of fluids to keep us going for very long. So you have to, it's not a choice. You have to stay hydrated one way or another. Yeah, that same article from Gentleman's Magazine from way back when suggested some other things of the time. Barley water, which sounds not too bad. Mm-hmm. Small beer.

What is this? You ever seen those little, little, little baby beers that are like eight ounces or whatever? Well, yeah, I looked that up. So they call that for low alcohol beer. Like I guess session beers basically would be a small beer, right? Well, I don't know, but that makes sense. Small beer.

Yeah, small beer. We called, me and my friends, Eddie and Allison, we called those tiny beers queets. I don't know. I think Allison made up the word and it just kind of stuck. And the fun thing about drinking those is you look like Andre the Giant. Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

I love doing that too. What else, apple water, linseed tea, toast in water, that may be the toast in water, remember that? I'm pretty sure that's what it is. I bet it is. Water gruel sweetened with honey. Eww.

Yeah. So I looked all over to see if anybody had conducted a study on whether this was true or not. And thank God our friends over in the Netherlands did in 2002. A group of Dutch researchers conducted a study, and they wanted to see whether feeding or calorie restriction has any effect on whether you have a cold or a fever or anything like

that. And what's astounding is that they found that it actually does have an effect like on the level of your immune system with the types of cells that are produced. That's right. They starved, well, I guess fasted, same thing, for both groups for 24 hours. And then the cold feeders, they gave a meal replacement drink, so not hot food in this case. And so after they had this, you know, sustenance, I guess, their blood levels of an immune protein called interferon gamma went really, really sky high, average increase of 450%.

And interferon plays a role in regulating our response to infections in our immune system. So you would think like, hey, eating is like exactly what you want to do. Right. And then kind of as expected, the other group, the group that had to fast, their interferon gamma levels actually went down by about 83%. So they lost some robustness to their immune response because they weren't eating. So, so far you're kind of like, all right, this makes sense for sure. The surprise came with a different kind of immune cell called innerleukin 4, which they found actually rose in the group that was fasting.

Dr. Ben Hickman Yeah, by an average of almost 400% compared to the 450 for the other. And I think that was one patient whose fasting levels rose more than 1100%. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Wow. Dr. Ben Hickman And this is also an important part of our immune response, but it's different kinds of immune responses. So if you're thinking like, well, hey, if I starve myself, then this one's going to go up. Like, you don't know which cells you need. So it's not a sort of a roulette game you should try and play by starving yourself. No, for sure.

That interferon, that helps produce antibodies, like for specifically targeted to an infection, and the interleukin uses our bodies like innate response, like sickening cytokines that you normally have laying around in your body on it. So yeah, you can't game the whole thing. So that's why doctors across pretty much the board say, if you're sick and you feel like you can eat, like you're hungry, eat something for sure.

Yeah, because what you want is a little bit of both and ideally more of both, but not a whole lot of one and a lot less of the other. Well put, especially when people rewind and listen a couple of weeks. I hope so. Well Chuck said he hopes so, which means everybody's short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.