Does drinking lemon juice mixed with baking soda or aspirin kill COVID-19?

Based on Science

Lemon juice will not prevent or cure a COVID-19 infection, no matter what is mixed with it.

Food Safety

Health and Medicine

Pandemics

Last update April 22, 2020

The acid in lemon juice will not kill coronaviruses in your body.

Consuming acidic drinks like lemon juice has no effect on coronavirus infections. Viral infections spread in your body when viruses enter your cells and make copies of themselves and then those copies enter new cells and repeat the process. Lemon juice will not destroy viruses in your body or stop the copying process.

Lemons contain vitamin C, an essential nutrient that is important for your overall health. However, there is no evidence that lemons or dietary supplements containing vitamin C can “boost” or “supercharge” your immune system to protect you from infections.

Raising the pH in lemon juice by mixing it with baking soda will not stop a COVID-19 infection.

Adding baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to lemon juice to make the drink less acidic does not change its effect on the novel coronavirus. As with regular lemon juice, lemon juice that is more alkaline after being mixed with baking soda will not destroy viruses in your body or stop the virus-copying process.

Drinking the juice hot, with or without baking soda, also will not prevent you from getting COVID-19 or destroy the virus if you are already infected. The same goes for boiling lemon peels in water and inhaling the steam.

Adding aspirin to lemon juice won’t help either.

Aspirin is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat pain, fever, and inflammation. Aspirin may relieve pain from sore muscles or a fever caused by a mild COVID-19 infection, but there is no evidence that aspirin stops the novel coronavirus from replicating in your cells, whether it is taken alone or mixed with lemon juice.