The lemon detox diet is based on a detox discipline invented by Stanley Burroughs, an alternative health practitioner. The original program was devised in the nineteen-forties but it did not gain international attention till the nineteen-nineties.
To understand the lemon detox diet thoroughly you need to know the basic principles of detoxification. The idea of detoxing is that we take in a load of toxins from our environment and these toxins need to be eliminated by fasting and restricting our diet.
The basic idea of detoxification makes sense in relation to smoking, drinking alcohol and taking drugs. If you want to break an addiction to smoking cigarettes, for instance, you need to stop smoking for a day or two to let the nicotine be eliminated from your body. Once this is done, you will only be needing to deal with breaking habits in your daily routine and not the physiological cravings triggered by the nicotine in your body.
The idea of ridding your body of nicotine, alcohol, caffeine or other addictive drugs is reasonable as part of an effort to overcome an addiction. But the principle does not stand up to scrutiny when it is applied to detox diets, fasts and herbal concoctions.
Take the lemon detox diet for instance. It is based on a drink made up of lemon juice, maple syrup, water and cayenne pepper. These ingredients are said to have qualities that encourage detoxification of the body. What these qualities are has never been made clear. Neither has it ever been explained what the toxins are that the lemon detox diet, or any other detox regime are supposed to eliminate.
The lemon detox diet ingredients are sold in stores with the recommendation that the main ingredient, Madal Bal Natural Tree Syrup was specially formulated for the detox with the correct mineral concentrations and nutritional value. The commercial lemon detox uses grade C+ maple syrup mixed with a special blend of palm syrups that are claimed to be "highly nutritional". Nowhere in any of the publicity for diets such as the lemon detox are we told HOW these highly nutritional palm syrups and other special ingredients benefit our bodies or which specific toxins they help to eliminate.
So really there is no scientific basis for detoxing in general and the virtues said to come with any particular detox diet are, as far as I can make out, just flim-flam. The one thing that is claimed for detoxing that can be proven is that it gives you a break from your bad eating habits. If you are addicted to a diet that is high in sugar, a fast gives you the opportunity to break the addiction and to plan a more balanced diet.
Any opportunity to re-evaluate our lives needs a structure of some kind. If you feel that a detox diet is the kind of structure you need then who can say that you are doing the wrong thing? Just get advice from your doctor before embarking on any kind of fast.
