No Appetite When You’re Sick? That’s Great!

 

By Kim Marquardt, RN MSN

This blog post is from the Nurse Kim archives of myth busting. I want to share some "alternative" or maybe just lesser known health and wellness viewpoints for you to chew on.

*These posts are not intended as official medical advice.

They ARE meant to be fun, informative, and thought provoking, hopefully sparking an interest for you to do your own research (you can start with the links I provide!) and discover the marvels of the human body, and how it can function at its optimal performance level if we understand how it works and interacts with our environment and our diet.

I have a passion for health and wellness through lifestyle and nutrition and have done thousands of hours of research in addition to being a registered nurse for 23 years. I have done A LOT of self-experimentation in and around diet, lifestyle, body care, and supplementation and have spent a lot of time looking into the science behind it all (or lack thereof!). Check back weekly for the latest post!

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Have you ever noticed when you are under the weather, your appetite suffers if it exists at all? Or worse, if you are a parent, you can’t get your child to eat ANYTHING AT ALL when ill?

Well good news.

I am at your service today to tell you this phenomenon is TOTALLY OKAY. In fact, fasting while sick can actually be beneficial. This is one of those things that we can chalk up to the body being smart and knowing exactly what it is doing… and what it can and can’t handle when moving through an immune response (i.e., killing a virus!!). But as always, let’s take a deeper, SCIENCIER, dive…

Disclaimer: We are not talking about not eating for weeks and weeks here, we are talking about a day or two max. And whenever possible, you should be taking fluids as you can tolerate. We are also not talking about a stomach virus, where you may be getting severely dehydrated with symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea. This might be a situation where you would seek medical care and IV hydration if not resolved quickly depending on the severity.

Besides those caveats, believe it or not, your body’s response of decreasing your appetite actually helps you conserve energy while ill because it in turn increases the immune system’s capacity to fight a virus or infection. How does it do that? Don’t we need to eat for energy? Sure, but eating is also a HUGE expeller of energy due to digestion. So huge in fact, that the conservation of energy from not having to digest is more beneficial than the calories that would be gained by eating. Your body has plenty of stored energy for just this type of situation.

Now, let’s talk about what you can do to optimize this situation and get better as quickly as possible.

Hydration

As discussed before, try to stay hydrated. Keep some cold water, (room temp or warm if you prefer) near you at all times and sip on it when you can. I know a lot of people think this is a great time to drink sports drinks full of sugar. I never recommend drinking sugar for any reason, however, drinking sugar while sick is even worse than usual. It is a great way to interfere with vitamin and mineral absorption, specifically, Vitamin C, which is a vital element in assisting the body to fight an illness.  

Vitamin C

Sugar inhibits Vitamin C absorption because glucose (sugar) and Vitamin C have a similar molecular structure. So, to get proper levels of Vitamin C in your system to assist with fighting infection, you need to limit your sugar to that which is present in whole foods (bell peppers and broccoli are great sources), and maybe consider a Vitamin C supplement while you’re not hungry.

Bone Broth

Bone broth is a fantastic way to “eat” while not eating. Bone broth is some of the best stuff on earth as a liquid gold nutrient dense super food that is easy to consume. There is something to the “chicken noodle soup” strategy for healing after all, although I would recommend just the broth, as that is really the “meat” of the deal (pun intended) and where all the nutrients are (and noodles are a processed food, gluteny yuck fest). And I bet something you didn't know is that bone broth is a natural decongestant! Yeah! It is rich in the amino acid cysteine, which breaks down mucous and clears out the nasal passages. Whoa!

So… now we can all chill out over not having an appetite when sick, stop trying to force feed ourselves (and our kids), and let our body do what it needs to do to get better.

Until next week ya’ll!