Chicken Soup Isn't Just Good for the Soul!

Mainstream medicine is provided by doctors who are nervous about malpractice suits and is funded by the government or insurance companies. That means most doctors have a good reason to suggest more tests while most patient have no good reason to say "no." Third-party payment of medical bills is not the only reason medical costs keep rising, but it is certainly part of the problem.

Self-pay patients (including those who participate in healthcare sharing ministries) are different. They want good health, but it comes out of their pockets--initially, at least--not some big company's. This should lead self-pay patients to work a little harder at staying healthy. They ought to eat chicken soup a little more often and Big Macs a little less.

Of course, eating chicken soup is just a metaphor for old-fashioned approaches to staying healthy. Nobody really believes chicken soup heals colds--or do they?

As it turns out, chicken soup really does help people get over colds. Chicken soup contains high levels of collagen, which is the richest source of glycine in the body, as collagen is 22% glycine by weight. Health-conscious people have so relied on lean, skinless, boneless meats lately that the average American diet is now lower in collagen than it used to be. Dr. Joel Brind writes in Chicken Soup, the Common Cold, and Proglyta,

...a research team at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha found that chicken soup actively inhibits inflammation. Specifically, they tested a standard laboratory model of neutrophils... in vitro, and found that a soluble substance in chicken soup ” significantly inhibited neutrophil migration and did so in a concentration-dependent manner.” And it is inflammation that is responsible for most of the symptoms of cold and flu.

 If you hate chicken soup, try Jello. It has the very same proteins. (Is this why Jello always seems to be on the hospital menu?) There's also "Sweetamine," a glycine-based supplement you can use like a sweetener.  It''s healthy choices that set self-pay patients apart!