Diet taboos for acute pneumonia

Just avoid the three types of foods that can aggravate inflammation, irritate the respiratory tract, and affect the efficacy of medicine. There is no need to blindly ban so-called "fat foods", let alone deliberately go hungry. Ensuring nutritional supply can speed up recovery.

Last week, during a follow-up visit in the respiratory department, I met a sophomore boy who had mycoplasmal pneumonia. His fever had gone away for three days, and his cough had also eased a lot. The result was that the serum albumin was lower than when he was first hospitalized. When I asked him, I found out that his mother had heard people say that eggs and milk are "hairy substances" and eating them would aggravate his cough. So he was given white porridge and stir-fried cabbage every day. The young man was already thin, and even walked a little shaky these days. His recovery speed was a whole week slower than that of the old man in the same ward who could only eat boiled eggs every day.

Many people tend to go to extremes in their understanding of pneumonia diet. They either dare to eat anything or dare not touch anything. To be honest, things like butter hot pot, spicy crayfish, pickled meats that are so salty that they are bitter, and iced milk tea that is so sweet, you really have to endure these things first. Don’t believe it. A while ago, there was a 19-year-old boy who asked a friend to eat butter hot pot as soon as his pneumonia subsided. He coughed so much that he couldn’t sleep all night. This kind of heavy-tasting food will irritate the airway mucosa and cause more secretions. The cough that was originally good may worsen. No matter Chinese or Western medicine, you will not be advised to touch these in the acute stage.

As for the most quarrelsome question, "Can hair be eaten?", in fact, the views in different fields are indeed different. The Traditional Chinese Medicine Association recommends that if you still have a high fever, cough a lot of yellow and thick phlegm in the acute stage, and are allergic, you should temporarily avoid foods with particularly high protein content such as shrimps and crabs to avoid aggravating the body's inflammatory response. ； But the view of Western medicine is that acute pneumonia itself is a high-consuming disease. A fever consumes much more energy than usual for three or four days. The body needs protein to synthesize immune cells and repair damaged mucous membranes. As long as you are not allergic to eggs, milk, fish and shrimp, you can eat them normally. Boiled eggs, warm milk, and steamed fish are all much better sources of nutrients than white porridge. To put it bluntly, the body is like a war. If you don't provide enough food and grass, how can the immune cells fight the pathogens? The patients I usually manage, as long as they have no history of allergies and do not cough more severely after eating, are encouraged to eat 1-2 eggs a day, and the recovery speed is indeed much faster than those who blindly avoid the food.

Rather than worrying about whether hair products can be eaten, there is one type of taboo that is truly non-negotiable: Never touch foods that conflict with the medications you are taking. The most typical thing is that when taking cephalosporins and metronidazole antibiotics, do not touch anything containing alcohol, whether it is liquor, beer, liqueur chocolate, glutinous rice dumplings, or even alcoholic functional drinks. Disulfiram reaction is not a joke, serious cases will really cause shock and send you to the ICU. Also, if you are taking antipyretics such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen, try not to eat anything that is too acidic and irritating on an empty stomach, such as strong coffee, a lot of raw lemons, and strong hawthorn water. The fever itself can easily damage the gastric mucosa. If you eat these things, you will easily suffer from acid reflux and stomach pain.

Don’t think that a “light diet” means you can only drink white porridge and eat vegetables. Light means less salt, less sugar, less spicy, and avoid heavy oils and heavy seasonings. It does not make you a vegetarian. I have seen many patients’ family members give them white porridge every day, praising it as “easy to digest”. As a result, after the fever subsided, the patient’s feet were limp for several days, and the patient’s immunity could not keep up and the disease relapsed a second time. It was really not worth the gain. You can stew chicken soup with the floating oil removed, steam fish without adding pepper, or boil a few fresh shrimps. These are all good choices. As long as you don't feel uncomfortable after eating them or aggravate your cough, you can eat them.

In fact, there are so many mysterious taboos. Everyone’s body is different. If someone else eats something that makes you feel uncomfortable, it may not be a problem for you. If you are really unsure, just ask your bedside doctor. It is much more reliable than the messy “10 foods that must be banned for pneumonia” that you searched online.