There's a bunch of so-called reasons out there for drinking water with fresh lemon juice in it first thing every morning.
IMNSHO, most of them are hogwash. Sure, lemons contain vitamin C, pectin and potassium, but not enough to do anything. Unless you're juicing scores of lemon, the health benefits are minimal.
Also, I am not a morning person. I need a huge dose of coffee first thing in the morning. Then I need to sit like a lump until it hits me. So nothing else is going to happen first thing in the morning until after that!
But once I'm wakened enough to face the day without growling, the first step of my morning routine is to juice half a lemon.
Lemon juice makes the medicine go down... or something.
vitamin C
I add vitamin C to my lemon juice each morning. I use a powdered form of vitamin C, so this is most convenient for me.
There are those of you who are going to tell me that "artificial" vitamin C is not as good as natural.
There may well be compounds in natural sources of vitamin C that contain co-factors that cause it to be better absorbed or that make it work better. This is why I take it with lemon juice.
But the "artificial" vitamin C is bio-identical to "natural" vitamin C.
Yes, I know it is most often extracted from GMO corn. However, it is purified and there is nothing "GMO" about the final product.
If you object to it because you don't want to support the GMO industry; I have no argument with you. That's a noble enough reason. There are non-GMO vitamin C powders out there.
But there are no health reasons to avoid it.
forms of vitamin C
Vitamin C can either be an acid, or it can lose it's hydrogen ion and have that be replaced with a cation to form a salt.
Ascorbic acid is the name of the acidic form. When you hear people talk about taking it to "bowel tolerance", they are usually talking about the acidic form. In short, larger does of ascorbic acid will give you the runs.
The cheapest salt form is sodium ascorbate. The problem being that most of us do not really need to supplement sodium particularly. Still, it is the cheapest type that will not have you running to the john if you over-do it.
IMO, the best forms are calcium ascorbate and magnesium ascorbate, as you get a small dose of a mineral you may need. Because we have water that is very hard, and it's almost entirely calcium from limestone, I personally take magnesium ascorbate.
back to the lemon water thang
So I juice half a lemon as shown in the image to the left.
I add 1/8 tsp magnesium ascorbate, which is 410 mg of vitamin C and 30 mg elemental magnesium.
I do not mega-dose unless I'm sick; this is more than enough vitamin C to get me through my day.
The people pushing lemon water seem to want you to drink it warm like tea. I prefer lemon water to be like lemonade, so I add ice and filtered water.
I then add enough stevia to make it not taste awful.
So that's the first thing I do after my initial coffee.
Next in my morning routine is fresh veggie juice and then my broth concoction. Tune in next time! :)
