December 18, 2024 • 11 mins
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.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
That's right. 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, and originally started 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
(00:31):
much at all.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, I think most people have heard that, right, that's
a pretty widespread adage. Yeah. Our friends at the Cleveland Clinic,
not normally known for their etymology resources, but they trace
this back at least half of it to fifteen seventy four.
There's a dictionary that was compiled by a guy named
John Wile's and withal said that fasting is a great
(00:55):
remedy of fever. So you got the second part right there,
starve a fever, right, And it's as far back as
anyone's trace 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.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, I'm not sure about this one, he said, the
most most exquisitely slender diet you should have when the
disease is very sharp. So I'm not quite sure what
disease he's talking about there, So I'm not sure if
that counts.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
No, But I mean just the phrase most exquisitely slender
diet sounds awesome, so I thought it was worth putting
in there.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, for sure. If you look at the current use
of the term as we know and love it, it
came about in the eighteenth century, pretty late in eighteenth well,
I guess kind of mid in eighteen fifty three. That's
when they were talking about feed and starve. As far
as cold and fever go.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
What's weird, Chuck is I saw that it was this
whole adage that we is, like basically, encouragement is 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
(02:09):
it was ambiguous is because of that comma in the middle.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
But well, what was the whole point? I mean, like,
if the what was the idea that was based on
I guess then.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, I guess they were basing it on if you
have a fever, then you don't want to eat hot food.
I guess it didn't need.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
A lot of cold foods back then, I guess not.
And if you're.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Cold, you want to warm yourself up because there was
only hot food available.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
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 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 how
about that?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
As s K as good you should know.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Okay, So people have basically always said that this was
a bad idea. There was a writer and Gentlemen's Magazine
in seventeen eighty five that said it was perhaps more
destructive demandkind than the plague itself. This advice, which is
definitely overstating things but people these days say, no, that's
(03:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
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 want to take advantage of it
when it does show up. And even more to the point,
(04:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, if your metabolism is kicking in in a substantial way,
it's gonna 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 going to want as much as you can. So
if you're hungry, cold fever or whatever, by god, eat
something or drink something. Definitely need to stay hydrated. Even
(05:01):
if you're not hungry. There are plenty of ways to
get you know, nutrients and liquid.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
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. Yeah,
I don't even need.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Fevers are no fun, but I love when I when
I'm sick and I get a fever and the fever happens,
I'm like, okay, Like this is my body doing its thing,
so I feel good about it.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah. Yeah, it is kind of weird. It's like almost
giving it like a grudging salute, like way to go body, exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
It didn't feel great, but oh there's no better feeling
than like breaking that fever, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh for sure the worst is when the fever comes
on in the morning and you've got fever all through
the night. Fever is that? Okay?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So make sure that was an accident.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You said, can you imagine the coincidence? Like what would
the odds be of.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
That don't know a natural songwriter.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I guess so you said that you want to drink,
especially if like 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 Idiocrisy, and or
like thin broths like a chicken broth can have a
bunch of calories in it. Even vegetable broths have some calories,
(06:23):
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
(06:44):
a choice. You have to stay hydrated one way or another.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, that same article from Gentlemen's Magazine from way back
when suggested some other things of the time. Barley water,
which sounds not too bad, small beer, mm, one of those.
You ever seen those little little little baby beers, they're
like eightouncers or whatever.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Well, yeah, I looked that up. That was so they
called that for low alcohol beer. Like I guess session
beers basically would be a small beer.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Right, Well, I don't know, but that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Small beer, yeah, small beer.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
We called me and my friends Eddie and Allison called
those tiny beers tweets. I don't know what. I think
Alice had made up the word and it just kind
of stuck. And the fun thing about drinking those is
you look like Andre the Giant.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I loved doing
that too.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
What else, apple water, linseed, t toast and water that
maybe the toast in water, remember that.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I'm pretty sure that's what it is. I bet it
is water gruel sweetened with honey. 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 in two thousand and two,
a group of Dutch researchers conducted a study and they
(08:04):
wanted to see whether feeding or calorie restriction has any
effect on whether you have a cold or fever or
anything like that. And what's astounding is that they found
that it actually does have an effect like your on
the level of your immune system with the types of
cells that are produced.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's right, they starved well, I guess fasted same thing
sure for both groups for twenty four 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
(08:44):
of an immune protein called interferin gamma went really really
sky high average increase of four hundred and fifty percent.
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.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Right, And then kind of as expected the other group,
the group that had to fast, their interfere on gamma
levels actually went down by about eighty three percent, 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
(09:22):
different kind of immune cell called inter luken four, which
they found actually rows in the group that was fasting.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, by an average of almost four hundred percent compared
the four fifty for the other and I think there
was one patient who's fasting levels rose more than eleven
hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
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 sort of a a
roulette game you should try and play by starving yourself.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
No, for sure, that interfere on that helps produce antibodies
like for specifically targeted to an infection, and the inter
luken uses our bodies like innate response like sicking 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
(10:24):
sick and you feel like you can eat, like you're hungry,
eat something for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Well put, especially when people rewind and listen to a
couple of foods I hope so well, Chuck, said you
hope so, which means everybody short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1 (10:55):
The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
That's right. 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, and originally started 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
(00:31):
much at all.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, I think most people have heard that, right, that's
a pretty widespread adage. Yeah. Our friends at the Cleveland Clinic,
not normally known for their etymology resources, but they trace
this back at least half of it to fifteen seventy four.
There's a dictionary that was compiled by a guy named
John Wile's and withal said that fasting is a great
(00:55):
remedy of fever. So you got the second part right there,
starve a fever, right, And it's as far back as
anyone's trace 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.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, I'm not sure about this one, he said, the
most most exquisitely slender diet you should have when the
disease is very sharp. So I'm not quite sure what
disease he's talking about there, So I'm not sure if
that counts.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
No, But I mean just the phrase most exquisitely slender
diet sounds awesome, so I thought it was worth putting
in there.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, for sure. If you look at the current use
of the term as we know and love it, it
came about in the eighteenth century, pretty late in eighteenth well,
I guess kind of mid in eighteen fifty three. That's
when they were talking about feed and starve. As far
as cold and fever go.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
What's weird, Chuck is I saw that it was this
whole adage that we is, like basically, encouragement is 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
(02:09):
it was ambiguous is because of that comma in the middle.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
But well, what was the whole point? I mean, like,
if the what was the idea that was based on
I guess then.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, I guess they were basing it on if you
have a fever, then you don't want to eat hot food.
I guess it didn't need.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
A lot of cold foods back then, I guess not.
And if you're.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Cold, you want to warm yourself up because there was
only hot food available.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
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 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 how
about that?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
As s K as good you should know.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Okay, So people have basically always said that this was
a bad idea. There was a writer and Gentlemen's Magazine
in seventeen eighty five that said it was perhaps more
destructive demandkind than the plague itself. This advice, which is
definitely overstating things but people these days say, no, that's
(03:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
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 want to take advantage of it
when it does show up. And even more to the point,
(04:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, if your metabolism is kicking in in a substantial way,
it's gonna 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 going to want as much as you can. So
if you're hungry, cold fever or whatever, by god, eat
something or drink something. Definitely need to stay hydrated. Even
(05:01):
if you're not hungry. There are plenty of ways to
get you know, nutrients and liquid.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
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. Yeah,
I don't even need.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Fevers are no fun, but I love when I when
I'm sick and I get a fever and the fever happens,
I'm like, okay, Like this is my body doing its thing,
so I feel good about it.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah. Yeah, it is kind of weird. It's like almost
giving it like a grudging salute, like way to go body, exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
It didn't feel great, but oh there's no better feeling
than like breaking that fever, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh for sure the worst is when the fever comes
on in the morning and you've got fever all through
the night. Fever is that? Okay?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So make sure that was an accident.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You said, can you imagine the coincidence? Like what would
the odds be of.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
That don't know a natural songwriter.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I guess so you said that you want to drink,
especially if like 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 Idiocrisy, and or
like thin broths like a chicken broth can have a
bunch of calories in it. Even vegetable broths have some calories,
(06:23):
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
(06:44):
a choice. You have to stay hydrated one way or another.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, that same article from Gentlemen's Magazine from way back
when suggested some other things of the time. Barley water,
which sounds not too bad, small beer, mm, one of those.
You ever seen those little little little baby beers, they're
like eightouncers or whatever.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Well, yeah, I looked that up. That was so they
called that for low alcohol beer. Like I guess session
beers basically would be a small beer.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Right, Well, I don't know, but that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Small beer, yeah, small beer.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
We called me and my friends Eddie and Allison called
those tiny beers tweets. I don't know what. I think
Alice had made up the word and it just kind
of stuck. And the fun thing about drinking those is
you look like Andre the Giant.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I loved doing
that too.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
What else, apple water, linseed, t toast and water that
maybe the toast in water, remember that.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I'm pretty sure that's what it is. I bet it
is water gruel sweetened with honey. 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 in two thousand and two,
a group of Dutch researchers conducted a study and they
(08:04):
wanted to see whether feeding or calorie restriction has any
effect on whether you have a cold or fever or
anything like that. And what's astounding is that they found
that it actually does have an effect like your on
the level of your immune system with the types of
cells that are produced.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's right, they starved well, I guess fasted same thing
sure for both groups for twenty four 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
(08:44):
of an immune protein called interferin gamma went really really
sky high average increase of four hundred and fifty percent.
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.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Right, And then kind of as expected the other group,
the group that had to fast, their interfere on gamma
levels actually went down by about eighty three percent, 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
(09:22):
different kind of immune cell called inter luken four, which
they found actually rows in the group that was fasting.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, by an average of almost four hundred percent compared
the four fifty for the other and I think there
was one patient who's fasting levels rose more than eleven
hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
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 sort of a a
roulette game you should try and play by starving yourself.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
No, for sure, that interfere on that helps produce antibodies
like for specifically targeted to an infection, and the inter
luken uses our bodies like innate response like sicking 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
(10:24):
sick and you feel like you can eat, like you're hungry,
eat something for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Well put, especially when people rewind and listen to a
couple of foods I hope so well, Chuck, said you
hope so, which means everybody short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1 (10:55):
The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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