Diet taboos for strep throat

Prioritize to avoid the three types of foods that are highly irritating, clearly allergenic, and have extreme temperatures. The other so-called "fat foods" and "cold foods" do not need to be strictly avoided, and can be adjusted according to your own tolerance.

A while ago, I met an old patient with chronic dysphagia. He usually controls it well, but when he went to attend his nephew's wedding banquet, he couldn't hold it back. He made half a table of spicy pork elbows with high-strength liquor. The next day, he was so swollen that he couldn't speak. Even swallowing saliva felt like swallowing a razor blade. He went to the hospital and was nebulized for three days before he recovered. In fact, these highly irritating foods are the number one culprit of pharyngitis. This does not mean that you should not touch spicy food or alcohol. It is not a big deal to eat a mildly spicy home-cooked dish or take a few sips of low-alcohol wine. However, spicy sticks with industrial spicy essence, pure mustard, liquor above 50 degrees, and salty pickled products. High-concentration irritants will directly make the throat mucosa congested and edematous. Parts that are already inflamed cannot be tolerated at all. Try not to touch them if possible.

Speaking of this, some people must ask, is it true that the older generation said that pharyngitis should not touch "hairy things"? This is actually a quite controversial point. In the traditional Chinese medicine system, the term “hair-allergen” mostly refers to foods that are likely to induce old diseases. In the context of modern medicine, they actually correspond to individual allergens. I met a girl before. I heard her elders tell her that she shouldn't eat eggs or seafood if she had pharyngitis. She stopped eating eggs and seafood for more than half a year. The pharyngitis didn't get better, and a physical examination revealed mild anemia. After asking, I found out that she was not allergic to seafood and eggs in the first place. She had lost two major sources of high-quality protein for no reason. Her immunity was not improving, and her inflammation naturally healed slowly. To put it bluntly, as long as you don’t have an itchy throat, cough, or redness and swelling after eating a certain food, you can eat it normally, whether it’s seafood or mangoes. You really can’t make the mistake of just following what others tell you to avoid, and you’ll lose nutrition.

Another point that many people tend to overlook is food with extreme temperatures. Boiling soup fresh out of the pot in winter, milk tea that is too hot to hold, soda popsicles and popsicles that are so cold in summer are refreshing to take one bite, but they are no less damaging to the mucous membrane of the throat than chili peppers. I once had a colleague whose chronic pharyngitis had been stable for more than half a year. When he was working on a project in the summer, he drank a glass of iced Americano a day. He had an acute attack for a week in a row. He even postponed his speech at the department's weekly meeting. By the way, the World Health Organization has long classified hot drinks above 65°C as Class 2A carcinogens. Not only patients with pharyngitis, but also ordinary people should not drink too hot things all the time. Repeated burns to the mucous membranes are not a good thing.

As for the sayings on the Internet that "you can't eat sweet foods" and "you can't eat cold fruits if you have pharyngitis", they are actually not universal. As long as it's not overly sweet heavy cream cake or full-sugar milk tea, the natural sugar in the fruit is not only fine, but it can also supplement vitamins to help repair mucous membranes. When I suffer from pharyngitis during the change of seasons, except for avoiding ice drinks, spicy pots and freshly fried crispy snacks, I basically eat normally. I occasionally boil pear water to moisten my throat, which is much better than when I drink plain porridge all the time and dare not touch anything.

After all, dietary taboos vary from person to person. Don’t put too many unnecessary restrictions on yourself, avoid foods that are clearly uncomfortable, and eat enough nutrients to make inflammation disappear faster.