Dieting during winters could impair the body’s immune system and make people more susceptible to the flu virus, experts have found.
Mice who were put on a calorie-controlled diet found it harder to tackle the infection than those on a normal diet, BBC News website reported on Friday.
The findings suggest that contrary to the old adage “starve a fever”, those with a temperature should eat well. Flue cases in England and Wales aer currently approaching a nine year high.
The team at Michigan State University found even though the mice on the lower calorie diet received adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals, their bodies were still not able to produce the amount of killer cells needed to fight an infection.
As well as being more likely to die from the virus, the mice-which were consuming around 40 percent of the calories given to their counterparts on a normal diet-took longer to recover, lost more weight and displayed other symptoms of poor health.
“Our research shows that having a body ready to fight a virus will lead to a faster recovery ad less severe effects than if it is calorically restricted,” said study lead author Elizabeth Gardner.
“IF the strain of flu a person is infected with is different from the strain included in the flu vaccination, then your body sees this as a primary infection and must produce the antibodies to fight it off,” Gardner said.
The study, the team added, should not be seen as a carte blanche to avoid dieting all year, but to reserve weight control to the eight months of the year when flu is not so virulent.
Source TOI
