Can Lemon Juice Hurt Your Skin

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There are more DIY skincare recipes on the cyberspace than you can shake a stick at, and most of them actually, actually like lemon juice. Co-ordinate to these DIY tips you lot should exist slathering information technology all over your face and hair. Lemon juice smells squeamish, and information technology's pretty cheap. But is information technology effective? And is it safe? Let'due south talk nearly the science behind lemon juice.

Here's the video version – go on scrolling down to read!

Is it effective?

Lemon juice contains a lot of ingredients that are used in skincare:

• Vitamin C: Lemon juice contains vitamin C in the form of ascorbic acid. Vitamin C does a great chore at evening out pigmentation without also much irritation, and could help increment collagen in your peel as well. Information technology's also an antioxidant that counteracts complimentary radicals, making it proficient at protecting your pare from the sun.
• Citric acid: Citric acid is an alpha hydroxy acid (AHA). You lot can read more about AHAs in skincare here, but in curt they're great for exfoliating your skin, making it look plumper and smoother.
• Niacin (vitamin B3): This is anti-inflammatory, helps with pigmentation and alleviates dry skin as well. More nigh niacinamide here.

Related Post: How to Become Glowing Skin: All Most Exfoliation (Video)

And then yes, lemon could exist keen for your skin! But earlier y'all rub a lemon on your face, there are a few issues with using lemon juice…

How stiff is a lemon?

Not just do you need a skincare production to have effective ingredients, you besides need skincare products to have enough of each effective ingredient. This is besides known every bit the dose-effect relationship – the smaller the dose, the smaller the effect, until at some point yous have so little that there's no effect.

Since lemons are natural ingredients, the amounts in them can vary. You know how different varieties of apple tree can taste completely dissimilar? Or how different brands of apple juice await and taste different? Or how an unripe banana is cypher like an overripe banana? That's because they contain unlike amounts of chemicals in them.

Related Post: Are Natural Beauty Products Better? (Video)

This is exactly the same for lemon juice – the amount of each skillful ingredient in your lemon will depend on all sorts of things, similar where information technology was grown, the fourth dimension of year, how long it'southward been sitting around for, the variety of lemon, whether the lemon was kept refrigerated or at room temperature after picking… in that location's no guarantee that you'll exist able to replicate a recipe.

But in a typical sample of lemon juice, you'll discover 0.04% ascorbic acid, 5% citric acrid and 0.0001% niacin.

Normally in skincare, serums volition have five-15% ascorbic acid, 2-15% AHA, and two-10% niacinamide. So in lemon juice, y'all only really get a decent corporeality of citric acid.

Is lemon juice safe?

Onto the more than of import question: is lemon juice rubber to use in skincare? Unfortunately, the answer is… probably not. While food might feel benign since we eat it all the time, information technology's often a different story if you effort to use them in skincare. There are millions of other chemicals in lemon juice, and some of these are not proficient for your skin.

Phytophotodermatitis

The citrus fruit peels often contain chemicals called furanocoumarins and psoralens. These are fine in the shade, but if you get them on your skin and then get into sunlight, they plough into nasty pare irritants. There are many stories of people who have gotten lemon juice on their peel and gone into the dominicus – the result was nasty blistering burns!

You lot can tell how common it is from all of the reports in the literature of this happening with citrus juice.

These phototoxic compounds can be removed from citrus essential oils by processing though, and a few don't comprise these at all (due east.g. tangerine), so not all finished products containing citrus need to be avoided. But in that location'south no like shooting fish in a barrel manner to separate them if yous DIY!

Chemic Leukoderma

DIY lemon juice skincare has also been linked to chemic leukoderma, where patches of skin depigment – in other words, you stop upwards with uneven lightened patches on your skin.

For instance, this article has photos of what happened to one adult female who tried using a lemon juice toner – instead of evenly fading pigmentation, the lemon juice faded it in patches, leaving spots everywhere.

Another person ended upwardly with depigmented patches after using lemon juice on their face for 5 days.

It's not entirely clear how exactly lemon juice does this – it could only be the low pH of 2, which is lower than pretty much all skincare products except peels, which are applied carefully and neutralised, instead of being left on peel.

Lemon isn't fifty-fifty that cheap

Lemon might seem cheaper than a properly formulated skincare product, but information technology turns out it isn't even that cheap.

Citric acid is the simply active ingredient in lemon juice that'southward in a high enough concentration to do annihilation. But it's actually cheaper to go out and buy pure citric acrid and dissolve it in water. A jar of citric acid is $ii.25 for 75 g. To get the same amount of citric acid from lemon juice (assuming that a lemon containing thirty-45 mL of lemon juice with five% citric acid costs $one.78), you lot'd be paying $sixty-89.

I still wouldn't recommend making this DIY serum. While this would avert the baking photodermatitis, it won't necessarily help you lot avoid chemic leucoderma (since the pH is however quite low unless y'all adjust it). And considering citric acid is quite a large molecule, it'll work better in a properly formulated product that'due south designed to aid the citric acid penetrate through your pare.

Information technology'due south hard to compare confronting properly formulated AHA products, since very few of them use citric acrid at all, and the formulas are quite different (different percentages will take different furnishings, and they oft comprise other benign ingredients too, and the effectiveness of the formulations will vary).

But if we practice a very rough comparison, for the same number of acid molecules (1 mole):

• • i lemon (5% citric acrid, $1.78 for 30-45 mL) = $152-228 per mole

• • KraveBeauty Kale-lalu-yAHA (5.25% glycolic acid, $25 USD = $35 AUD for 200 mL) = $254 per mole
  • The Ordinary Glycolic Acrid seven% Toning Solution ($14.50 for 240 mL) = $66 per mole
  • The Ordinary Lactic Acid 5% + HA 2% ($12.twoscore for xxx mL) = $794 per mole
  • The Ordinary Lactic Acid ten% + HA two% ($12.70 for xxx mL) = $407 per mole
  • Pixi Glow Tonic (5% glycolic acid, $28 for 100 mL or $45 for 250 mL) = $274-426 per mole
  • CosRX AHA 7 Whitehead Power Liquid (7% glycolic acid, $25 for 100 mL) = $272 per mole
  • Acne.org AHA+ (x% glycolic acrid, $26.33 for 177.42 mL or $46.49 for 473.12 mL) = $75-113 per mole
  • Paula'south Choice eight% AHA Gel (glycolic acrid, $39 for 100 mL) = $371 per mole

So not only are there lots that are comparable in toll to lemon juice, there are really a couple of finished products that terminate up being cheaper than lemon juice in terms of AHA molecules you get! And you have the added of being safe, and having a delivery system that'south more than probable to work.

Lemon isn't always dangerous

While it'due south incorrect to say that lemon juice is always unsafe in DIY recipes, there are enough scary stories to make you think twice!

If you lot withal want to use lemon juice afterward all this:

• Don't apply go out-on recipes with large amounts of lemon juice (more than than a few drops)
• Be cautious when using lemon juice for rinse-off recipes (e.g. masks or pilus rinses), especially if there'due south a large amount of lemon juice in information technology, and make sure you wear sunscreen next time you go into the sun.
• Stop immediately if yous meet any signs of irritation or depigmentation!

Further Reading

Hankinson A, Lloyd B & Alweis R, Lime-induced phytophotodermatitis, J Customs Hosp Intern Med Perspect2014, 4, 25090. DOI: 10.3402/jchimp.v4.25090

Almeida HL Jr et al., Transmission electron microscopy of the preclinical stage of experimental phytophotodermatitis, Clinics (Sao Paulo)2008, 63, 371-four. DOI: ten.1590/S1807-59322008000300014

Gye J et al. Chemical leucoderma induced past homemade lemon toner, Australas J Dermatol 2014, 55, 90–92. DOI: 10.1111/ajd.12133

Kumar K et al. Contact leucoderma caused by lemon, Indian J Dermatol Venereol Leprol 1996, 62, 61. PMID: 20947980

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