How does chicken soup cure the common cold?

[shkrobius]

I vouch that it works on me and my wife swears by it. So did countless Jewish wives. The origin of the discovery is cloaked in mystery. Maimonides (in his "Medical responsa") recommends chicken as a remedy against the early stages of leprosy, although he does recommend rooster testicles for treating the convalescent. The chicken soup first appears

Comments

[zanuda]

Chinese believe into medical properties of the chicken soup out of special black chicken. I think they found it independently from Jews. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_chicken#In_cuisine

[shkrobius]

Well, if you want exactitude, Maimonides also recommends that the chicken must be at least two year old. It does not seem to matter, as far as I can tell.

[terrink]

Soup cooked with young chicken is significantly less tasty.
By the way, how does your wife manage to cook real chicken soup with american chicken? I tried for over a year before finally giving up and switching to cornish hens for that purpose.

[dmpogo]

Buy what is called "cornish chicken". Exists frozen in most supermarkets

[arbat]

What do you suppose one can use as a placebo for the control group?

[vdinets]

snake soup tastes pretty much the same

[arbat]

Placebo must be known to have no effect on one's health, no?

[vdinets]

Well, it's not a placebo, of course, but it might help narrow down the search: if it doesn't have the same effect, then the active component (whatever it is) must be present in chicken soup and not in snake soup.

[763161]

Chicken soup coocked by my wife from isr components has perfect taste and is intended to be universal remedy against any diseases as well as ugly mood

[arbat]

чтоб два раза не вставать, - http://arbat.livejournal.com/427377.html

[kobak]

By the way, what do you think about common cold? Are chances to get it higher when one is exposed to cold? Wiki says that there's no evidence for that and no suggested mechanism of such an effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold#Cold_weather), but after all it's still called COLD in all languages, isn't it!

[shkrobius]

What I know is consistent with what's written there: the main effect of cold weather is getting people indoors. I wonder whether you realize how human this virus is. It is impossible to cause the disease with HRV in monkeys, apes, and other mammals; they can get infected but do not become symptomatic. There are influenza viruses for every vertebrate animal,but rhinoviruses are human. As far as I know, only horses have something like the common cold with runny noses (Equine rhinitis B virus, ERBV) caused by the same type of the virus. I do not know what is the current thinking, but it used to be believed that people got the common cold when horses were domesticated. The cold was unknown in the New World. My point is that wild horses do not get cold in cold weather.

[hannahsarah]

Do Eskimos get a higher incidence of cold than people who live in the tropics? How about Michigan vs. Texas? I'm willing to bet that the statistics are pretty even, all things considered.

If you get overly chilled and you already have a weak immune system, and then you go indoors where other people may be asymptomatic cold carriers, then it would look like you were the only one who got ill "because you got cold".

Viruses are opportunistic little buggers, they always go for the weakest link. The key isn't to avoid being cold per se, but to keep your immune system in top form no matter where you are.

[shkrobius]

There were no rhinoviruses in the New World before the arrival of the Europeans. It is said
http://www.jimmunol.org/content/15/5/395.full.pdf
that isolated Arctic Eskimos invariably developed a cold within 72 h of the first contact. Now their children have much higher frequency of ARI than other groups
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738482/