Keep Wrinkles at Bay and Fight Disease – It’s all that vitamin C, which is also known as ascorbic acid. Your body can’t create it, so you have to get it from food. It helps make collagen, which keeps your skin springy and full. Vitamin C, flavonoids, phenolic acids, essential oils, and coumarins are all plentiful in lemons and limes. They’re part of a team of superhero substances called antioxidants. They band together to fight the bad guys — free radicals — which damage your cells and lead to diseases and other health problems.
Give you Energy – Lemons and limes contain thiamin and riboflavin, part of a group of vitamins called B complex, which turn your food into the energy you need.
Kill Nasty Bugs – Their high acid content adds the perfect sour bite to your salad greens. It also helps kill salmonella bacteria that might be on your food, your cutting board, or your kitchen counter.
Lower Blood Pressure – Both the juice and the peel of lemons or limes can do the trick. Squeeze some in your water before and after you go for a walk. You may get more benefit from each.
Helps Keep your Heart Happy – It’s all about those flavonoids. Work more of them into your life and you’re less likely to get heart disease. That’s partly because they help keep the fats and sugars in your blood at healthy levels.
Boost your Brain – Lemons and limes have special chemicals that may keep brain cells safe from toxic substances in your body.
Get you Over that Cold – It’s a myth that the vitamin C in lemons and limes will prevent a cold. But you do need it to keep your immune system running at peak levels. Taking it at the first sign of the sniffles may help you feel better faster.
Improve your Cholesterol – A daily mixture of garlic and lemon juice could be good news for people with high cholesterol. Unhealthy levels are linked to hardening of the arteries (your doctor will call it atherosclerosis), which can cause heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes.
Prevent Kidney Stones – When minerals in your body clump together, they form these very painful little stones. Substances called citrates in lemons, limes, and other citrus fruits can help stop this buildup.