Dr. Eric Berg DC
so i’m going to talk about why lemon water is essential if you’re doing fasting and the ketogenic diet
now typically when you think of lemons you think of acid right citric acid and lemon juice and lemons are really good to decrease the risk of kidney stones because they help bind with oxalates okay
and most kidney stones are calcium oxalate stones there is some vitamin c in lemons okay but not if it’s in a jar and it’s pasteurized because the heat destroys the vitamin c
the other side note that you need to know is that any time you consume vitamin c in your body or any food with vitamin c and at the same time you’re consuming sugar. What’s going to happen is your body is going to absorb the sugar but not the vitamin c because their chemistry is very similar.
The body will always absorb sugar before vitamin c and i can think of like lemonade for example where people take the lemons and all the sugar they’re thinking
“oh yeah i’m gonna get some vitamin c “
“no they’re not”
okay so there’s some other benefits of lemon juice or lemons and you could use the juice of one lemon which is one ounce of lemon juice or just lemon juice for what i’m going to recommend
now what’s interesting about citrus in general and lemon juice or lime juice is that after you consume it within one hour that acid turns to an alkaline substance it turns alkaline so lemons are good for people that have acidosis where their ph is slightly too acidic.
okay that means the ph has dropped down now normally the blood ph should be between 7.35 and 7.45. okay now anything above 7 more alkaline so the blood is naturally alkaline but if it goes below this 7.35 you start developing a condition called acidosis
now here are the symptoms for acidosis ..
- Shortness of breath: your breathing is affected
- Labored breathing deep breathing
- Headaches because you’re actually getting too much co2
- You’re tired
- Confusion
- Tremors
- Sleepy
- Arrhythmias
- Increase heart rate
okay so these are all the symptoms of acidosis what’s interesting about that is there’s this concept that if you’re too acid. You’re always unhealthy we need to alkalize the body
okay alkalizing the body for every condition is a good thing including cancer but that’s actually not true , you don’t want to be too alkaline, you don’t want to be too acid
You want to be exactly right where you should be but in this post i wanted to talk about the symptoms of being too acidic and what causes that and the remedy would be lemon juice and you can put in your water so what causes our bodies to become too acidic
keto and fasting could do it , now if your body is healthy , you’re not going to develop acidosis
but ketones in general are acidic and when you do a ketogenic diet low carb and you do fasting, you’re going to have more ketones. You might have more acid in the body and so drinking lemon juice can help reduce some of the excess acidity
- if your kidneys are damaged you can develop acidosis.
- if you have too much iron, you can have too much acidosis
- Alcohol will put you in a state of acidosis and then you have a condition called lactic acidosis
This occurs when you consume metformin which is a medication for diabetes. one of the side effects would be lactic acidosis but really this mainly occurs if you are b1 deficient
if you’re consuming a lot of carbs that’s going to deplete b1 or refined grains especially so if you have acidosis taking b1 can greatly help that now ketoacidosis is very rare this only occurs if you’re a type 1 diabetic
and you fail to take your insulin so i mean taking lemon water is not going to create a big change for this. but this is very rare and this is not going to happen to anyone who is healthy so if you do a keto diet or fasting, you’re not going to develop this unless you’re a type 1 diabetic and you fail to take your insulin it delivers damage you can actually go into acidosis from that
- Excess exercise can also put you in a state of acidosis
now there’s other things that can do it too for example if you’re consuming a tremendous amount of apple cider vinegar or you do kombucha tea
like in the past i remember drinking a whole bottle of kombucha tea very very acidic and i definitely went into a state of acidosis because my heart rate started going very very high just pounding and pounding and pounding and i had some of these symptoms
my breathing was off. i couldn’t sleep at night so what i did is i drank some lemon juice so realize that the lemon turns alkaline after about an hour and it’ll start to adjust your ph
that way there’s certain conditions that will cause this and there’s certain conditions that will cause this
and you want to be right in the middle right here if you’re doing fasting if you’re doing keto, i would recommend to do this even while you’re fasting … take some lemon maybe about one ounce put that in water, drink that down and that way you can help minimize this condition and some of these symptoms.
Maxwell Bianco Dr. Berg, I hope you read this. I wanted to let you know you HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE. I was very overweight for quite a while. For many years in fact. I am now strong, able to hike miles in the heat, I lift weights 5 days a week, and more importantly I got my family back. Thank you so much for what you teach us; seems that you truly want the best for your viewers. -Maxwell B.
Slinkerdeer I swear you learn more from this than you do from your typical public school. Thanks doc
Chris S ” People are thinking, oh! I’m going to get some vitamin C!” “No they’re not.” 😂
Pam Love Wow this must of been the power of God, because im fasting and have been drinking a lot of apple cider vinegar Im feeling these symptoms and I drank some lemon water and instantly I start feeling better.
Walt I’ve been starting my days with lemon water, some salt/turmeric/cinnamon, then continue to fast until the afternoon. I find that it wakes up the body and mind the moment you drink it, also empowers your fast. Try it!
