The S&A Health Report: Porter Needed Some 'Jewish Penicillin'

Legend has it that this food cures whatever ails you. Eight hundred years ago, Maimonides, an old Jewish physician and philosopher, prescribed this for almost everything from hemorrhoids to pneumonia. In this century, your mom probably gave it to you when you were sick and home from school. "What is it," you ask? It is simply chicken soup.

How many of us fondly remember being home ill (or perhaps not so) and catered to by mom? What about the fantastic memory of the red and white label on a can of the classic Campbell's chicken soup, or perhaps the homemade stuff thawed and cooked straight from the freezer? Occasionally, my dad would make homemade chicken soup from a big bird that mom had prepared for a meal that night. Seemingly for days, my dad would add spices and vegetables to that simmering pot. Eventually, it would be declared ready, and a hearty meal of chicken soup and bread on a cold Minnesota night warmed our souls and our bellies. Some of the "stock," as he always called it, would be frozen for a later day. Mmm! I can almost taste the carrots and the celery… and the bay leaves.

It wasn't until years later that I truly began to appreciate the power of chicken soup. I had moved to New York City and was out to dinner one night with some colleagues from Goldman Sachs. The restaurant was on the East Side (lower not upper) and in a rough Eastern European neighborhood. On every table was a bottle that looked like a diner's syrup bottle but it was filled with a milky yellow material. The owner told us it was "schmaltz" and several of my fellow workers knew it to be rendered chicken fat. They knew this, they told me, because their families used chicken soup and especially the fat to cure colds. As luck would have it, that night I had a mild scratch and a sniffle, so I tried the schmaltz and the chicken soup. Voila… the next day I felt like a million bucks. My friends attributed my miraculous recovery to this "Jewish Penicillin." I was not sure then, but I am now. After years and years of occasionally teetering on the brink of a flu or a cold, I dose myself with chicken soup, and a little Vitamin C and often, within hours, my symptoms abate and I am usually back to 100% within a day.

How does it work? One study showed that chicken soup actually increased the velocity of nasal secretions… thus thinning the mucous and speeding up the clearing of a stuffy head. As it turns out, chicken soup also has chemicals in it that strongly affect the action of certain white blood cells called neutrophils – the main cells that attack things such as bacteria and viruses. These "neuts" are notorious for their sense of "smell" when there is an injury to the body. Within an hour, the neutrophils migrate through the blood vessels until near the site and then leave the vessels and head directly to the site of disease or injury. These short-lived cells quickly consume bacteria and kill the intruders using highly reactive, bleach-like chemicals. The problem is that these chemicals and others lead to inflammation and can quickly lead to pus and redness. Amazingly, chicken soup can slow down the response of these cells and thus reduce the amount and time of inflammation in our bodies. In fact, there is an interesting case of a patient with pneumonia who was on a daily regimen of chicken soup, and when he stopped ingesting the soup, he quickly became much sicker.

Even more fascinating is that the longer chicken soup cooks (bones and all), the higher the calcium content, thus making chicken soup another healthy food to prevent osteoporosis.

There are a few things that you can do to increase the cold-fighting power of your own homemade chicken soup:

Finally, if you do find yourself in bed with tissues and sniffles (like Porter), be sure to call me for my chicken soup recipe.

When it comes to CHICKEN SOUP... What do I do?

Here's to our health,

David Eifrig Jr., M.D., M.B.A.