We all know that chicken soup is the standard recommendation for colds and flues. After all, who does not remember spending time in bed with a bowl or mug of homemade soup when they were sick as a child? However, just what makes chicken soup so popular as a remedy? Here is a look at what scientific studies can tell us about the healing properties of chicken soup.
In the twelfth century, the Egyptian doctor and philosopher Moshe Ben Maimonides noted that chicken soup was an excellent choice for people trying to cure respiratory infections, and he probably was not the first. There is a pretty good chance that he had already seen the idea in earlier Greek writings. Now, modern researchers have joined in to find out if chicken soup really has the healing properties that are attributed to it.
Dr. Stephen Rennard, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, studied the medicinal activity of chicken soup to find out if it really did help illness. The heat and steam of soups in general is known to relieve congestion and throat problems, but is chicken soup better?
Three batches of matzo ball chicken soup were studied under controlled laboratory conditions, and shown to affect white blood cells. The specific cells affected were immune cells called neutrophils, which cause congestion. The soup prevented these blood cells from causing inflammation. Many commercially made soups, as well as the homemade variety, also showed this response. However, the ingredient responsible for this has not yet been identified.
Chicken soup might also be good for your blood pressure. According to researchers from the Nippon Meat Packers Research and Development Centre in Japan, the chicken in the soup might work a lot like blood pressure medicines called ACE inhibitors. The collagen proteins found in chicken legs helped decrease blood pressure in this study. Of course, chicken soup usually contains a lot of salt, which might nullify this effect.
How about the ability of chicken soup to keep you thin? Popular soup diets are used because they help you feel full longer, tricking your body by including a lot of water. They can help you eat less than you might normally, and will keep your calorie intake a lot lower. A study at the University of Nottingham showed that volunteers who ate chicken soup were full longer than volunteers who ate a dry meal including the same ingredients (vegetables, chicken, and water).
Overall, it is not clear that chicken soup is a significantly better cold fighter than other types of soup, since the vegetables in Rennard’s study performed the same way as the chicken. However, a good hot bowl of chicken soup could help you get over your cold. After all, it is full of protein and nutrients, warm, and filling. It could help you recover more quickly, just by being nutritious.
The next time you are sick and someone recommends you have a big bowl of chicken soup to help get rid of it, take his or her advice. You will enjoy a good meal that tastes great, and you could get some real health benefits, too.
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