If you are looking for a daily tonic to improve your overall health and lower your risk of cancer, look no further than a simple combination of lemon juice and baking soda. Lemon is a potent superfood filled with cancer-fighting compounds.
In addition, alkaline diet theory classifies both lemon and baking soda as pH-raising foods. The idea is that certain foods either make your body more acidic (lower pH) or more alkaline (higher pH), with an alkaline environment ideal for preventing cancer and other chronic diseases (and a more acidic environment promoting disease).
Lemon extract outperforms chemo drugs
Even without any pH benefits, lemon is a potent healing food. More than 20 studies dating as far back as 1970 have showed that lemon and lemon extracts are able to destroy at least 12 different varieties of cancer cells, and also prevent cancer from metastasizing. At least one study showed that lemon extract was 10,000 times stronger than mainstream chemotherapy drugs such as Adriamycin.
The full reasons for lemon's cancer-fighting effects are not known, but they have been partially attributed to the fruit's high levels of the antioxidant and cancer-fighter, vitamin C, and also the the presence of the phytochemicals known, appropriately enough, as limonoides. Like many plant-based cancer treatments, lemon seems more likely to leave healthy cells unharmed than chemotherapy drugs.
In addition to these benefits, lemon is an antibacterial and anti-fungal, and can also be used to treat intestinal worms and other parasites. It has been shown to relieve heartburn, bloating, constipation and nausea, to prevent kidney stones, to help regulate blood pressure, and to relieve stress and depression.
Practitioners of alkaline diet-based medicine also say that in spite of its acidic nature, lemon helps make the body more alkaline.
The alkaline diet has been prominently promoted by researcher Robert O. Young, author of the 2002 book The pH miracle.
"The focus for preventing and reversing cancer must be on maintaining the alkaline pH of the body fluids, and a recognition that cancer is a systemic acidic condition," Young has written.
To prepare a pH-boosting drink, mix a teaspoon of baking soda with about 7 ounces (just under a cup) of lemon juice. The beverage can be diluted with distilled water, as long as you drink the whole thing. For best benefit, it should be taken on an empty stomach, first thing in the morning.
Why and how to raise your body's pH
Promoters of the alkaline diet say that raising your body's pH can provide a wide range of health benefits, including reducing your risk of obesity, cysts, allergies, and chronic inflammatory conditions such as gout, arthritis and fibromyalgia. Seasonal and food allergies are also attributed to an overly acidic body environment, as are general fatigue, weakness and lack of energy.
If you are concerned that your body is overly acidic, the best way to improve the condition is to shift your eating patterns. According to Young, an optimal diet consists of 80 percent alkaline foods and only 20 percent acidic foods. Acidic foods are meat, dairy, sugar, refined grains, alcohol and caffeine. Alkaline foods include nearly all fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Some of the top alkaline superfoods are alfalfa sprouts, avocado, broccoli, brussels sprouts, buckwheat, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, chives, cucumber, flax seeds and oil, garlic, grapefruit, green beans, green peas, leeks, lemons and limes, lettuce, melon, millet, olive oil, onions, parsley, pears, pumpkin, radishes, sesame seeds and paste (tahini), soy (beans, sprouts and products), spinach, tomatoes, watermelon, wild rice and zucchini.
Young also recommends consuming slightly alkaline (ionized) water, in order to flush out wastes that have built up from years of eating unhealthy foods. A lemon-baking soda drink may be a more natural, less expensive way to achieve the same effect, however.