Lemon water detox is 100% not slay.
Despite what wellness influencers in TikTok tell you about it’s ‘alkalising’ or ‘detoxifying’ benefits, lemon water detox is just a glorified glass of water, with lemon in it.
Some watch outs we’d love to share as *actual* health professionals and Accredited Practising Dietitians:
- Detox claims are usually based on a misunderstanding of how our bodies work – our liver, kidneys and other organs work nonstop to ‘detoxify’ you, so you don’t need ‘magic remedies’! Yes getting plenty of plants is key, but go for the whole food goodness.
- Lemon juice doesn’t ‘supplement your stomach acid’ to help digestion. Your stomach does just fine producing all the acid it needs – unless you suffer from a real condition called hypochlorhydria (low stomach acid), in which case lemon water won’t do you any good either and it’s best to speak to a medical practitioner.
- It does nothing for your gut microbes as it’s fibre-free. It’s true lemons contain some fibre, but you’d have to eat the whole lemon, including the peel, to get even 1.5g of fibre (recap: we need at least 30g of fibre per day).
- Citrus fruits or juices are commonly reported triggers for heartburn and acid reflux, so if this affects you, try herbal teas like ginger or peppermint instead and enjoy them alongside other food, not on an empty stomach.
- Food or drink – lemon water included – don’t notably affect your blood’s tightly regulated pH level e.g. experiments (highly unethical) from the 1930s suggested you’d need to eat 8kg of oranges per sitting to, pH by 0.2 (normal range 7.35–7.45).
So I hope this helps clarify some thoughts on a Lemon water detox or whether you should drink lemon water every morning, as the wellness girlies might suggest. Zero shade to you if you like water with lemon in it. If it helps you drink more water throughout the day, great! But please know that it doesn’t have the health promoting benefits some might have tried to convince you.
If you’ve considered lemon water detox as a way to support your digestion, we’d strongly recommend working with a health professional to investigate what’s going on for you. In the meantime th research around mindful eating and benefits on digestion are pretty profound. You can read more about it here.
