SUPERCHARGE YOUR CHRISTMAS IMMUNITY (& BEAUTY) WITH LIME JUICE

A delicious way to boost your breakfast smoothie, clarify your complexion and beat the winter blues is freshly squeezed lime juice.. The Vitamin C and flavonoids in fresh lime juice offer a staggering array of health & beauty benefits, including enhanced collagen synthesis for a smoother, firmer complexion, a delicous, naturally more upbeat mood and protection from the common cold.

Other, more exciting and exotic benefits of lime juice taken from the American National Library of Medicine indicate that lime juice is not just good for preventing sailors scurvy, but that it can also cure or accelerate healing from a variety of life-threatening addictions & illnesses including:

•               Stopping Smoking: Likely the most preventable cause of death on this planet, a clinical trial comparing nicotine gum to lime juice extract found "Fresh lime can be used effectively as a smoking cessation aid."[6)

•               Preventing the common cold: the juice of a freshly squeezed lime every morning, optionally with a little freshly grated ginger and a dab of honey can reduce the severity and duration of the common cold – an even better, can prevent you from getting one in the first place. 

•               Protection against Food Poisoning: A recent study found that harmful bacteria in the raw fish dish known as ceviche, naturally containing pathogenic agents from fish, could be completely sanitized with lime juice. Both Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Salmonella enterica (two common causes of food poisoning) were reduced to below detection limits through the addition of lime extract.[2]

•               Malaria: Malaria is a mosquito-borne parasitic disease, which the WHO estimates causes 219 million of illness resulting in 660,000 deaths each year. A wide range of highly toxic drugs are used to treat the disease, but a recent study found that lime juice greatly increased malarial clearance when combined with standard drug therapy.[1]   They concluded: "lime juice when used with the appropriate antimalarial may enhance malaria parasite clearance especially in those with uncomplicated malaria."

•               Disinfecting water: Lime has been found to enhance the disinfection of water, by both killing norovirus as well as Escherichia coli.[3] Lime has also been found to kill the cholera pathogen, which is believed to affect 3–5 million people and causes 100,000–130,000 deaths a year as of 2010.[4]

•               Killing pancreatic cancer: Pancreatic cancer is a notoriously difficult to treat type of cancer. Lime juice was found to induce programmed cell death in pancreatic cancer cells.[5]

·               Sickle cell anemia (SCA): According to the CDC, SCA afflicts about 95,000 Americans and is diagnosed in 1 in every 500,000 African-American births. A hereditary blood disorder, SCA is characterized by an abnormality in the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin molecule in red blood cells. A clinical trial on lime juice was recently found to reduce painful episodes (50.0% lime juice intervention versus 92.7% control); febrile illness (46.6% lime juice intervention versus 87.3% control) and hospital admission rate (3.4% lime juice intervention versus 34.5% control) for sickle cell anemia in children.