Autumn is the season for colds, ARVI and ARI. Everyone, without exception, sneezes and coughs at this time, and everyone tries to cope with the illness in their own way.
Someone prefers to drive away the disease with drugs, someone is fighting it with folk remedies (radish with sugar, honey, raspberries and a lot of drink).
Meanwhile, not all foods, including drinks, are useful for colds. What kind of food and drink in case of a respiratory viral infection can do more harm than good, said doctor Dmitry Shubin in the program “Living Healthy”.
Orange juice. Despite the fact that it contains a certain proportion of vitamin C, which helps the body to cope with infection, it is not the most recommended drink during illness. The fact is that with ARVI, a cold, our mucous membrane is inflamed and irritated, and a person experiences a scratching in the throat and pain when swallowing. And when he drinks orange or other sour juice, because of its acidity, it irritates and destroys the mucous membrane even more. And the harm from it is much more than the benefit – the juice interferes with recovery. The best source of vitamin C for colds is bell peppers. Moreover, frozen peppers contain much more vitamin C than fresh ones.
Coffee and tea. Tea with honey or raspberry jam in unlimited quantities is the first home remedy that most of us resort to at the first sign of illness. Meanwhile, these drinks are not as healthy as they seem. Both coffee and tea contain high doses of caffeine, which blocks the antidiuretic hormone and has a diuretic effect. The volume of water in the body is constantly decreasing, it becomes dehydrated. It turns out such a paradox: the more tea and coffee we drink, the more fluid the body loses. Why is that bad? Dehydration of the body leads to thickening of the blood, and this slows down all immune processes, as a result of which recovery is delayed.
Therefore, if you cannot imagine your life without tea and coffee – drink, just be sure to drink these drinks with plain water – a cup of coffee or tea plus a glass of water. And it is best to drink only water during a cold, and unsweetened.
Sweets. Well, how not to pamper yourself with something tasty during illness? Meanwhile, cookies, sweets, cakes, honey, jam and other sweet joys of life contribute to an increase in blood glucose levels, and the immune system begins to “slow down”. Immune cells – “eaters of microbes” – which are called upon to fight and kill pathogens of acute respiratory infections, become covered with sugar molecules and cease to function. Sweets essentially “sugar” the immune cells in the same way that foods in excess of sweets are sugar-coated. Immunity stops fighting colds.
Even Hippocrates said that food can be medicine, and medicine can be food. And today we can add to this that food can also be very dangerous, especially during illness. Therefore, one must be picky and try to ensure that only healthy foods are in the diet.