*immune not immense
In: Biology
Look at it from the evolutionary perspective. Humans generally hunt and eat in groups. We are social animals. Once you are sick, possibly due to a viral infection, you have the chance to transmit it to your fellow group members. But, if you lose your appetite, that won’t happen since you did not eat with them, sharing the same table. It is a behaviour hard-wired in your brain to save the group.
Once you are sick, you lose your enthusiasm to go out, socialize with other people as well, for same reason.
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Digesting food uses up energy, energy you are lacking as your body is trying to fight off foreign bodies.
The reason why you lose your appetite is usually nausea. So basically you don’t feel like eating because you’ll probably just throw it back out. That being said, you should still try and eat when you are sick and keep as much of it down as you can because, as you said, you need that energy.
There are lots of reasons for changes in metabolism when you are sick.
* Increasing temp as part of immune response
* rapid increase in white blood cell production and other immune factors
* Body getting rid of stomach and bowel contents in case infected or poisoned food is an issue.
There are probably more as well.
Then there are the benefits of emptying the digestive tract (in case you have been wounded) to reduce sepsis (internal infection)
Then there is the benefit in a competitive environment of hiding away from predators (human and wild) when you are least able to protect yourself and most likely to be the part of the “herd” that is culled. If we feel sick we tend to hide in the cave.
Add to this that occasional fasting is good for us, so this is a perfect opportunity to reduce our food intake, and reduce the part of our metabolism involved in food gathering, consumption, digestion and elimination.
Digestion uses a lot of water, and oftentimes if you’re sick, you’re at least a little dehydrated from vomiting or sweating.
Somebody who went further in Bio than me will detail this I’m sure, but iirc it has to do with creating an Iron deficiency and Iron binding. Iron is important for a virus to replicate itself, and your body works to make it unavailable
There was a paper not long ago about food allergies caused by infection.
In short, if you eat something while sick your body might develop an allergic reaction to the food. They think it is the source of gluten intolerance and similar mystery ailments.
It would make sense to avoid food if that’s the case. You will either get healthy or die from infection long before starvation would be a problem.
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