Baking with lemon on an empty stomach: the properties of the fashionable breakfast

[Warlock-]

 

every day new treatments, diets and dietary guidelines appear that promise to revolutionize our health by providing everything we need. One of the newest and is on everyone's lips is breakfast water with lemon and baking. This mixture is attributed properties ranging from avoiding acidity of the stomach or whitening teeth to cure cancer itself. As in everything, there are truths, half-truths and lies. This treatment is based on joining elements with pH of opposite value. The pH is the degree of acidity that the aqueous solution has. This scale measures the value between zero and 14, with a neutral pH being that of water, which has exactly seven. The acids have a very low pH. For example, hydrochloric acid has zero, sulfuric acid from a battery has less than one, and lemon juice has 2.4. On the other side are the bases, also known as alkaline substances. The caustic soda has a pH of 14; the lye, 11.5, and the sodium bicarbonate, nine. The further away on this scale two substances are, the more reactive they are to each other. When reacting a base with an acid, the result will always be a salt (not necessarily common salt) and water, with the possibility that carbon dioxide will also appear.

 

A glass of water with lemon juice and bicarbonate will help us to alleviate problems such as acidity or reflux

The fashionable method is to prepare each morning, always fasting, a glass of mineral water of the time with a tablespoon of baking soda and the juice of half a lemon. The water with lemon and bicarbonate fits into what is known as an alkaline diet. This is because the bicarbonate has a very high pH. Since our body has a natural pH of 7.4, it can be considered basic, and therefore foods with high pH will alter it less. There is no scientific literature about the properties of this union, but of its elements separately: Baking soda is widely used in gastronomy as baker's yeast (makes biscuits have more air and are more spongy than with traditional yeast), but also in medicine. Its alkaline properties are used for a wide variety of conditions, such as metabolic acidosis (a condition in which the body produces too much acid, usually because the kidneys do not work properly) or to treat acid reflux. Lemon has always been considered one of the healthiest citrus fruits, mainly due to its high content of vitamin C (per 100 grams, provides 64% of the recommended daily amount) and citric acid.

So far, proven properties. If we get into the debatable, one of the benefits that are attributed to this 'potion' is to whiten teeth. Bicarbonate is used in toothpastes for its bleaching effect, although, as noted by researchers Kleber CJ, Putt MS and Nelson BJ in an article published in 'The Journal of Clinical Dentistry', "the color differences were not linear or consistent , the accuracy to assess clinical changes in the whites of the teeth is questionable. " For its part, in a 1945 article published by a team of researchers led by Edward C. Stafne of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, it was shown that "the increase in consumption of lemon juice is linked to the dissolution of the dental matter. " That, separately. The effect of the mixture of both substances on the teeth is still to be studied.

 

Unfounded claims by an oncologist about the effects of bicarbonate on cancer gave rise to erroneous beliefs

What is clear is that there are affirmations that should not be made, especially if they are not corroborated by a multitude of studies. Having breakfast water with baking soda and lemon prevents and even cures cancer is the most risky. The ex-oncologist (his medical license was revoked in 2006) Italian Tullio Simoncini believed that cancer was caused by the fungus Candida albicans, which dies in contact with bicarbonate. He was convicted in 2006 for homicide. This statement about the effects of bicarbonate on cancer gave rise to erroneous beliefs, especially because at that time it was an oncologist who encouraged them. What is proven is that a glass of water with lemon juice and bicarbonate will help to relieve certain stomach problems such as heartburn or reflux, and also be a great contribution of vitamin C.