This is touted as one of the cheapest ways to rid yourself of that extra flab. From my personal experience, it is one of the easiest method advocated. I simply cant extend gym sessions beyond a month, or jog in the morning for more than 2 weeks. Nor can I starve one day a week or eat less rice and other starchy foods. To top it all, I have a sweet tooth in the place of the wisdom tooth!!

So, this is what I do. Drink lemon juice with water the first thing in the morning and hope that the fat will melt. After all, Ayurveda says that. And after a quick search on the web, I realised there are awful lot of TeleBrand type entities trying to sell citrate to the world's growing population of obeses and make a quick buck in the shiny sun!

So is this a quackery? Most of the content on the web talks of how lemon juice helps in de-toxifying the body, how lemon juice alkalanizes the body thus helping it get rid of the acidic wastes, how it "melts fat" and so on. One site goes to claim "The trick however, is to have the water lukewarm. If the water is too hot or too cold then it will cause the body to expand energy in order to process it." Click Here for a first-class tour of the same.

There is a lot of crap on the web with regards to Alkaline Water, and the "innovators" are probably reaping a hell lot of money. Claims like "For only $2500 you too can enjoy the benefits of pH 2.5 water— good for curing "Hong Kong foot" and many other ailments" abound. Although this is a very controversial topic, I think there might be some truth in the claim that slightly alkaline water/foods might be beneficial, and it needs to be investigated more. It has got to do something with the mechanism by which stomach cells secrete HCl. An increase in the pH of the stomach generates a feedback signal that increases the HCl secretion into the stomach. The by-product of HCl synthesis is sodium bicarbonate, which is released in the blood via a bicarbonate-chloride antiport system. This increase in bicarb level in the blood would definitely lead to more buffering, as bicarbonate-carbonic acid-CO2 system is the primary buffering system in the blood. Of course, this would depend on the equilibria between the three components. But, it has also been reported that with age the bicarbonate concentration in the blood reduces, and such a method might be helpful to increase the buffering capacity. Another catch in this argument is that it is also reported that HCl prodution decreases with age, so you would be decreasing the gastric acidity for nothing, which in fact, would be harmful as it would enable pathogens to pass through unharmed!

OK enough about Alkaline Water. Back to Lemon Juice.


So I searched the Internet to desperately find alternative ways and means to burn my fat and I came upon a recent review on such therapies, to which I could get no access to. (If you gets it, please email me). But I also learned in the process that some studies on rats have given some hope. It turns out that hydroxycitrate is an inhibitor of the enzyme ATP-Citrate Lyase that breaks down Citrate to OAA and Acetyl CoA, the latter being the raw material for Fatty acid synthesis. So, citrate promotes fatty acid synthesis (Its a positive regulator of FAS) and its analog-hydroxycitrate-inhibits it. Wow! Now, as there is no Acetyl CoA, there is no Malonyl CoA (an inhibitor of Carnitine acyltransferase that promotes fat breakdown), and hence, the process of fatty acid breakdown resumes. Thats what I call killing two birds with one stone. An excellent non-peer reviewed review of the pre-1998 research on the field can be found by clicking here

However, despite these studies, there is no conclusive evidence of hydroxy-citrate causing weightlos. It continues to be administered to obese patients though. There are conflicting results (1) (2) (3). Some people have also found that hydroxycitrate inhibits glucose uptake in intestine. We also know that citrate helps in melting fat globules, thats why we apply lemon to greased clothes. So the lipases that work at the interface of fat-water would carry out their action faster. Maybe it works??

So, till the time someone does this study rigorously, I am going to be less rigorous in my weight-loss programme and hope that these lemons would bring me some cheer...!