It’s 2019, are you still putting lemons on your face?

Considering the Tagline for this blog you might have guessed this would be the first post.

If you did, congratulations, if you didn’t, well, congratulations too because you’re here to learn.

We have all heard of lemons and how they claim to be all healing, I mean if you have a heart attack just rub some lemon on it.

I recently saw a blog post titled “10 uses for lemons for your hair, skin, nails and more” I would expect the more would cover for the Heart Attack I mentioned earlier.

So, Lemons smell nice and to be honest, are pretty cheap but how effective and safe is it to use lemons on your skin as opposed to a proper formulated product with the similar properties of a lemon.

Let’s dive right into the science behind this.

Lemon Juice contains a lot of ingredients which are very famous for their good deeds at the moment;

• Vitamin C in the form of Ascorbic Acid, it evens out hyperpigmentation, increases collagen and is a powerful antioxidant, fighting free radicals and claims to reverse/reduce photoaging.
• Citric Acid, which is an alpha hydroxy acid (AHA). They’re great for exfoliating your skin and making it look smoother.
• Niacin (Vitamin B3) is anti-inflammatory, helps with pigmentation and alleviates dry skin too.

If Lemon has all these great acids and vitamins, then why could it possibly be bad for your skin?

With Skincare products, It’s not enough to have “active” ingredients, you must have “active” ingredients in the right proportion. Also, because Lemons are fruits the amount of these ingredients vary from lemon to lemon, which means you never actually get the same amount of Ascorbic acid or Niacin.

The same way a ripe banana differs from an unripe one and an overly ripe one is the same way lemons differ from each other depending on their stage and this is because the chemical composition differs per stage. This would mean that you will never get to accurately replicate a formula.

Let’s see the amount of these ingredients in lemon juice vs. regular skincare serums

	Typical Lemon Juice	Regular Skincare Serum
Ascorbic Acid	0.04%	15%
AHA Content	5%	2-15%
Niacin	0.0001%	2-10%

In reality, you are only getting a decent amount of Citric acid from slathering lemon juice on your face.

Is it really worth the trouble?

Is it in fact safe?

This is a more important question than its effectiveness in my opinion, unfortunately, the answer is No.

If life gives you lemons, make a cold glass of lemonade not a Lemon Juice Toner.

There are many other chemicals in Lemons which are harmful to your skin and because you are using the whole lemon you will also have these other chemicals on your face too.

Lemon Peels (Citrus peels) contain furanocoumarins and psolarens which may not harm you in the shade but once in contact with sunlight they cause nasty blistering burns, this is called phytophotodermatitis but I’m sure you’re not here for big words.

Also DIY Lemon Juice or Toners or whatever have been linked to Chemical Leukoderma which basically means that you end up with uneven lightened patches on your skin and I’m sure that’s not what being a cheetah girl means.

Let’s not leave Lemon’s low PH value out of this, it’s highly acidic at around 2.0 (it could be lower depending on how ripe the lemon is) and can cause a chemical burn which may lead to permanent damage over time. It would disrupt the natural PH of your acid mantle, potentially causing skin irritation, hyperpigmentation and making your skin really sensitive to the sun.

The worst part of this is that most of these things mentioned here would be really hard to get rid of. Pure Lemon can potentially wreak havoc on your skin. If you need to get all the Vitamin C, B3 and AHA value on your skin, stick to properly formulated products that are designed for and tested on skin.   

So, next time your favorite YouTube Vlogger comes up with a DIY lemon Juice Toner for whatever reason and you think you may want to try it, kindly dead that thought.