Best treatment for a cold is lots non-caloric fluids and fasting. It works by letting your body put its energy into healing instead of digestion.
Stop eating 3-4 hours before bedtime to improve sleep. Same principle.
Stop eating 3-4 hours before bedtime to improve sleep. Same principle.
I doubt not eating for a single day while fighting a cold is going to matter though, especially if sedentary/sick in bed.
During a prolonged fast you'll be decreasing white blood cells, which doesn't seem ideal if you're already sick. But AIUI it's mainly this aspect that "reboots the immune system", and can prevent illness once feeding has resumed and the catabolism undone. Basically you get a refreshed immune system, afterwards:
“When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged,” Longo said. “What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. So we started thinking, well, where does it come from?” [0]
[0] https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regene...
[0] -- Ketogenic diet activates protective γδ T cell responses against influenza virus infection https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/sciimmunol.aav2026