lemon diet, a diet or detox

Lemon diet , a diet or detox?

We hear a lot about lemon dieting. First thing comes to mind; lemon is very healthy, rich in vitamin C and must be very good for health.However, the story is much more complex and there are many issues involved.
In 1940, Stanley Burroughs introduced a detoxification diet consisting of lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup in water. It involves drinking this mixture up to 12 times a day. The diet can last for at least 10 days and includes salt water flushes and laxatives to help with the flushing of the system. This was reintroduced in a book by Peter Glickman in 2004.

The above would eventually result in weight loss because of combination of dehydration and restriction of calories to maximum of 1300 calories/day.
Stanley Burroughs described in his book lemon diet as the master cleanser. As he specifically used the word cleansing,this would make us believe that cleansing of the body was his main target rather than weight loss which comes only as a side product.
Variety of complaints have been associated with this diet, most serious was the dehydration and profound hypoglycaemia which can very serious particularly for diabetic patients.
This is all built on the concept that our bodies are full of harmful chemicals, additives, and pollutants. These can be responsible for big percentage of this century illnesses. They are responsible for the bad breath, fatigue, loss of energy and even psychological problems like depression .
Whenever we hear such kind of talk, we have to take it with a spoonful of salt. Simply because is not based on solid science neither it is supported with good respectable evidence. It is over simplification from those who are merely trying to find quick fixes.
Our body has a wonderful state of the art cleansing instruments.We have two kidneys which acts like a sophisticated filtering machine which get rid of unlimited number of toxic elements with super efficiency. We always have tendency to under value the capacity of a healthy human body. In fact we don’t stop there, we actively engage in making our healthy organs function less efficiently. May be we don’t realize that severe dehydration can actually harm our kidneys by causing the destruction of the tubules through the impairment of the blood supply brought about by the very low blood pressure as a direct result of dehydration.

We have to mention here the second human organ which also takes part in the eternal job of detoxification. Our Liver is the other fantastic filtering machine which has huge power of regeneration and responding to huge numbers of insulting agents. Actually detoxification is only one function of a long list including synthesis, breakdown and storage of vital elements and vitamins.

It is part of human nature to take good things for granted. We only understand and appreciate their importance when they are gone as happen in liver diseases or kidney problems.The bottom line here, if lemon diet was meant to be the best detoxifier that our body needs, then we know by now it is clearly not. What we left with is its power to make us lose weight fast, safe and steady. This is the question we have to answer. I personally don’t like giving quick judgement simply because I know that only arrogant people do that. What I am actually after is the truth; I need you all out there to help me getting to this through sharing with me your views and experience with this kind of diet. Looking forward to hear from you.

ALI NAKASH www.passwin.org