When you’re sick, you may be tempted to nurse your illness with all the fixings of modern medicine. After all, they’re engineered to relieve your symptoms.
If, however, you’re looking to supplement these or use more holistic ingredients in your approach to healing, there are an abundance of foods that will do the trick.
Here are six foods to eat when you’re feeling under the weather.
1. Garlic
According to Healthline, studies have shown that garlic can speed up your recovery from illness as well as combat the cold and flu. For the maximum impact, raw garlic and garlic extract work best.
Healthline reports that cooking garlic can cause it to lose it’s medicinal properties, though crushing it and leaving it out for 10 minutes before cooking it, slicing it before eating and increasing the amount of garlic used can help maintain these properties.
2. Chicken Soup
Widely known as a sickness comfort food, chicken soup is the real MVP of immune system recovery. According to Fortune, chicken soup has been used as a remedy for thousands of years and can be traced back to ancient China and the Roman empire. Besides being a good source of nutrients and an electrolyte, chicken soup offers a range of other benefits.
Colby Teeman, assistant professor of Dietetics and Nutrition at the University of Dayton, writes for Fortune that chicken broth can help people recovering from illness consume more nutrients, improve nutrient digestion and reduce gastrointestinal symptoms and inflammation.
According to Teeman, the broth’s umami flavor increases appetite and sends our digestive system signals through our taste receptors to increase protein absorption. This, in turn, helps relieve nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain and vomiting.
As far as reducing inflammation goes, chicken broth helps to, “lower the number of white blood cells traveling to inflamed tissues... by directly inhibiting the ability of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, to travel to the inflamed tissue,” Teeman writes.
Respiratory symptoms like stuffy nose, sneezing and coughing all result from inflammation of the respiratory system, so reducing inflammation will relieve symptoms.
3. Hot Tea
Much like chicken soup, hot tea has been in the home remedy rotation for thousands of years, and for good reason. As a hot drink, it acts as a sore throat reliever and natural decongestant, loosening up mucus in your respiratory system.
Tara Tomaino, RD, nutrition director at The Park, praises tea for it’s chemical makeup. Tomaino told Good Housekeeping, “Tea catechins are natural antioxidants. Antioxidants work in the body to protect cells from free radical damage.”
Tea is also beneficial in replenishing fluids, which should be top of mind for everyone recovering from an illness, especially when fever and vomiting are involved.
4. Spicy foods
If you’ve ever eaten spicy food, you’ll likely remember the experience from having a runny nose and feeling like you’ve just cleared out your respiratory system. While studies are limited, some show that the active ingredient in spicy foods, capsaicin, evokes a positive response in sick patients.
According to Federica Genovese, a neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, spicy foods can also act as a pain killer by temporarily overwhelming your body’s pain receptors.
Genovese told Inverse that spicy foods may help relieve a sore throat by numbing it. Menthol, she said, works similarly. Instead of relieving symptoms by numbing the area, menthol makes your sinuses more sensitive, so you think your breathing has improved.
In reality, Genovese reveals, “it’s just helping us feeling the air going through the nose.”
Spicy foods may not, however, be the best option for those suffering from gastrointestinal symptoms as spice can aggravate them.
5. Green leafy vegetables
Leafy greens contain vital nutrients to immune health so consuming them in recovery can only help fortify your immune system. These nutrients include: antioxidants, Vitamins A, K and C, calcium, fiber, folate, magnesium, iron and potassium, per Health.com.
During sickness, our bodies need more nutrients, and leafy greens make up an important part of a nutrient-dense diet.
According to Health.com, a 2018 study concluded that a compound found in leafy greens, polyphenol, can aid in reducing the inflammation that causes the aches you get when you’re sick.