KOMPAS.com – During the rainy season, not a few people experience respiratory ailments such as: cough and have a cold or flu.
Symptoms of cough, flu and cold can be treated according to the severity of the disease, but can get worse if ignored.
Apart from taking medicine coughs and coldsYou can also avoid foods and drinks that make coughs and colds worse get well soon.
Reported by Firstpost, Thursday (13/2/2020), the following is a list: food and drinks what to avoid when suffering from coughs and colds to get well quickly.
Also read: Cough Every Morning, Is It Due to Stomach Acid or Other Diseases?
1. Caffeinated beverages
Your body needs more fluids to keep you hydrated when you have a cold.
Coffee, tea and caffeinated drinks act as diuretics, increasing the excretion of water and salt from your body.
So drinking 3 to 4 cups of cappuccino or latte regularly is not a good idea when you have a cold.
Also read: 6 Ways to Start the Morning Without Drinking Coffee
2. Spicy food
When someone has a cough or cold, it is usually advised to eat spicy food so that the phlegm comes out quickly. This is true.
In addition, the capsaicin in chili peppers has a desensitizing effect and helps manage inflammation.
However, according to research published in Critical Review in Food Science and Nutrition in 2016, capsaicin also stimulated the production of more phlegm.
Eating a spicy curry for example, it may relieve your symptoms for a few minutes, but it will make things worse in the long run and delay your recovery.
Also read: Why Does Eating Spicy Food Make Your Head Itchy?
3. Gula
Some people like the sweet taste of sugar and add it to food or drink, even when they are sick.
But consuming sugar is one that can make your cough worse.
According to research published in Frontiers in Immunology in 2017, increasing sugar intake can suppress the immune system, especially when fighting viral infections.
The same goes for the common cold, so make sure you stay away from these foods.
4. Milk
You may have been told not to drink milk and dairy products when you have a cold because these products create more phlegm and that will obviously make things worse.
In addition, according to research, milk also makes the existing mucus thicker and more difficult to remove.
Therefore it is best to avoid milk when you have a cold.
Also read: 5 Foods and Drinks That Aggravate Coughs and Colds
5. Alcohol
According to research in the journal Alcohol in 2007, consuming alcohol is associated with increased lung and bronchial inflammation.
Alcohol also suppresses the white blood cells in your blood, which are needed to fight the flu.
What’s more, alcohol dehydrates you, while what you need most during a cold is increased fluid intake.
Source: Kompas.com (Author: Nur Fitriatus Shalihah | Editor: Rizal Setyo Nugroho)
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