Feed a cold, starve a fever: The truth behind the medical proverb

I often hear the phrase, “Feed a cold, starve a fever” whenever I’m having stuck-in-bed blues due to cold or fever. I’ve managed to stick to this proverb in my recent bout with the flu and it somehow helped me get through my manic days. I don’t know if that’s the real reason, but it’s intuitive sense to eat when you have a cold since the condition could weaken the body for days. It’s also rational to starve while running a fever considering it could lower one’s appetite for a day or two and makes fasting relatively feasible.

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My curiosity has introduced me to an enormous body of research aiming to verify this medical maxim. Among the highlights of my inquiry are:

• A 2002 study confirms that the old wives got it right after all. The researchers discovered that a person’s nutritional status has significant effect on the regulation of immune response.
• Infection-induced appetite is a behavior intended to prevent pathogen invasion. In layman’s terms, decreased appetite due to fever helps boost the immune system, which is the body’s main line of defense against disease-causing microorganisms.

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• While this study suggests that calorie restriction (CR) in mice and rats has been found to decrease the occurrence of tumors and extend their life span by 20 to 30 percent, it also underlines that mice and rats are better off eating when it comes to flu. The researchers also noted that little is known about CR and cancer incidence in humans.

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After a day of researching, I’ve come to terms with the fact that the medical proverb isn’t as neat as it appears to be. I’ve got literary sources such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and other scientific studies backing the claim that the proverb doesn’t quite qualify as a doctor’s advice.

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