Consider swapping your standard cup of coffee for a glass of hot water and lemon first thing in the morning. The combination can benefit your body in numerous ways, including helping you to lose weight and keep hydrated, and improving your digestion and upping your vitamin C intake. You can even spice up this morning drink to boost its benefits.
Function: Drinking lemon water first thing in the morning stimulates your digestive system. This improves your body’s ability to absorb nutrients. Poor absorption of nutrients can cause you to feel hungry even when you are not.
Mornig
Effects: Lemon water cleanses your palate on the way down. Once in your body, it helps to gently flush your kidneys and your liver of wastes and toxins. It also can help cleanse your lymphatic system, another body system that eliminates toxins.
Significance:
Both lemons and water are on list of fat-flush foods. Water helps you stay hydrated. Your body stores more fat when you are dehydrated because your kidneys need help from your liver to function when your body is in this state. This hampers the liver’s ability to burn fat. Water also is a natural appetite suppressant. Being dehydrated, in contrast, can cause feelings of hunger. Lemons may help reduce cellulite because the fruit stimulates blood flow to your skin and helps your body flush out waste. Lemons also boost your body’s ability to metabolize fat.
Benefits
Lemon juice provides a high amount of vitamin C, notes Atkinson. One lemon gives 30.7 mg of vitamin C, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The recommended daily amount is 75 mg for women and 90 mg for men. People who consume more vitamin C have more efficient digestive systems than people who don’t. Lemon also increases the acidity of your digestive system, which helps you to absorb calcium better. Calcium absorption helps you lose weight because calcium is stored in fat cells. The more calcium in your fat cells and the easier it is to stimulate their burn. Vitamin C also boosts your immune system, helps prevent coronary heart disease, and lowers your risk for stroke, cataracts, and gout. This antioxidant vitamin also may help lower cancer risk when consumed via fresh fruits, according to Oregon State University.
Potential
Adding a tablespoon of lemon juice along with some of the lemon’s zest can provide 1,600 oxygen radical absorbency capacity, or ORAC, units to your diet, according to Women’s Health magazine. An ORAC unit is a measurement developed by the National Institutes of Health to measure a food’s antioxidant capacity. A higher value means more antioxidant benefits, such as fighting cell-damaging free radicals. One antioxidant lemon juice provides is eriocitrin, which may protect against oxidative stress in the liver.
Please check with your doctor before start any exercises and drink plenty of water!
By Simone Cavalletti