The cayenne pepper diet is the Master Cleanse: days of only a lemonade made with maple syrup and cayenne, plus a salt water flush or a laxative tea. People do lose weight on it, because they’re eating so little. But it doesn’t detox anything, the weight tends to come back, and the cayenne is doing very little. Here’s how it works, what’s in the drink, what the research found and who should skip it.
One quick note first: we know chili peppers, but we’re not doctors, and this is a diet that cuts out food for days. If you’re thinking about trying it, or any cleanse, talk it over with your doctor first, especially if you have diabetes, heart or kidney disease or high blood pressure, or take medicine. They know your health, and we know peppers.
What is the cayenne pepper diet?
It’s a liquid fast: for several days, often 10, you drink a lemonade of fresh lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and water, usually 6 to 12 glasses a day, and that’s all you eat. Plain water and herbal tea are allowed.
Most versions add a morning salt water flush, a quart of warm water with 2 teaspoons of salt drunk on an empty stomach, or an herbal laxative tea at night, and both are there to empty your bowels. Plans usually wrap the fast in a few days of juice, broth and light food going in and coming out, too.
What’s in the lemonade?
The usual recipe for one glass is 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of maple syrup, a tenth of a teaspoon of cayenne and 10 ounces of water. Here’s what that adds up to, using USDA figures for each ingredient.
| Nutrient | 1 glass | 6 glasses | 12 glasses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 111 | 670 | 1,340 |
| Sugar | 25 g | 150 g | 300 g |
| Protein | 0.1 g | 0.9 g | 1.7 g |
| Fat | 0.1 g | 0.8 g | 1.5 g |
| Vitamin C | 12 mg | 72 mg | 143 mg |
So a full day of 12 glasses is about two-thirds of a typical 2,000-calorie day, almost all of it sugar, with under 2 grams of protein. Adults are advised to get about 46 grams of protein a day for women and 56 for men. And the 150 to 300 grams of sugar, all from maple syrup, is three to six times the limit on added sugar in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Where did the Master Cleanse come from?
Stanley Burroughs, a self-styled healer without a medical license, started selling the lemonade fast in the 1940s and wrote it up in his 1976 book, The Master Cleanser. He promoted it as a way to cleanse the body and claimed it could help with problems as serious as ulcers and cancer.
Those claims ended up in court. According to the California Supreme Court, Burroughs told a 24-year-old leukemia patient to take only the lemonade, salt water and herb tea for 30 days and to stay away from his doctor. The young man died about three and a half weeks in. The evidence pointed to deep abdominal massages Burroughs gave him, not the lemonade, as the cause. Burroughs was convicted of selling a cancer cure and of practicing medicine without a license, and those convictions were upheld in 1984, though the court threw out a murder conviction.
Does the cayenne pepper diet help you lose weight?
Yes, at first, because you’re eating very little. The best study of a cleanse like this one shows where the loss comes from. In a 2015 Korean trial, 84 overweight women were split into three groups for a week. One drank a lemon detox juice of maple and palm syrups and lemon juice, one drank a placebo juice with the same calories, and one ate normally. Both juice groups lost more weight and body fat than the women who ate normally, and both saw their insulin resistance fall.
The placebo group saw the same kinds of drops in weight, body fat and insulin, and the authors credited the results to cutting calories. Only the lemon group’s hs-CRP, a marker of inflammation, went down, which they suggested might be a benefit for heart health. The trial was funded by a Korean company, Cencorp Korea, and its description of the juice doesn’t mention cayenne at all.
Does the weight stay off? Rarely, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), which says detox and juice diets tend to lead to weight gain once people go back to eating normally. Their long-term effects haven’t been studied.
Does it detox your body?
The evidence for that is thin. In a 2015 review of detox diets, two Australian researchers found very little clinical evidence for them, and the few studies they did find were small and poorly designed. They couldn’t find a single randomized trial of a commercial detox diet in people. One of them also pointed out that these diets rarely name the toxins they claim to remove.
What does the cayenne do in the cleanse?
Very little: at a tenth of a teaspoon a glass, you’d get 0.6 to 1.2 teaspoons of cayenne a day. Capsaicin, the compound behind its heat, can nudge up the calories you burn and blunt your appetite a little, but studies put the extra burn at about 50 to 70 calories a day. Our guide to capsaicin and weight loss goes through the trials.
It adds a bit of vitamin A, too, as our look at cayenne pepper nutrition shows, but that hardly makes up for days without food. Mostly, it gives the lemonade a kick.
Is the salt water flush safe?
It’s a lot of salt: two teaspoons of table salt carry about 4,650 milligrams of sodium, roughly twice the 2,300-milligram daily limit in the Dietary Guidelines, all at once and on an empty stomach. Coarse sea salt packs less into a teaspoon, but it’s still a big dose.
The flush and the laxative tea work by giving you diarrhea, and NCCIH warns that detox laxatives can cause diarrhea and dehydration. It also says that drinking large amounts of water and tea while eating little or no food for days could lead to dangerous electrolyte imbalances. And NCCIH says harm from colon cleansing is more likely in people with heart disease or kidney disease.
What are the side effects of the cayenne pepper diet?
Most of them come from the fasting and the flushing rather than the pepper.
- Hunger, headaches and weakness: NCCIH lists headaches, fainting, weakness and dehydration among the effects of fasting.
- Diarrhea and dehydration: from the salt water flush and the laxative tea.
- Electrolyte problems: from days of water and tea in place of meals.
- Gallstones: NIDDK says that losing weight very quickly may raise your chances of forming them.
- Weight regain: once you start eating normally again.
Who should skip it?
Check with your doctor before any cleanse, and give this one a pass if any of these fit you:
- You have diabetes. A full day of the lemonade is 150 to 300 grams of sugar, and NCCIH advises people with diabetes to follow the eating plan from their health care team.
- You have heart disease, kidney disease or high blood pressure, especially with the salt water flush.
- You’re pregnant or breastfeeding. Memorial Sloan Kettering advises against cayenne as an herbal remedy if you are.
- You take prescription medicine, until you’ve talked it over with your doctor.
- You’ve had an eating disorder, or you find yourself drawn to cutting out food this hard.
If that last one sounds like you, the National Alliance for Eating Disorders runs a free helpline at 866-662-1235.
Is there a better way to use cayenne for weight loss?
Cook with it. Cayenne adds a lot of flavor for about 6 calories a teaspoon, and capsaicin’s small effects come along with every meal you season.
For the weight itself, slow wins. NIDDK suggests aiming to lose 5 to 10 percent of your starting weight over 6 months, and its guide to dieting and gallstones notes that losing weight slowly makes gallstones less likely.
And if you like the drink, our cayenne lemonade uses the same four ingredients as a treat. Have it with your meals, not instead of them.
Cayenne pepper diet claims: fact or fiction?
- “The cayenne burns the fat off.” Fiction. You lose weight because you’re taking in 670 to 1,340 calories a day, and a placebo juice with the same calories worked too.
- “It detoxes your body.” Unproven. A review found little good evidence for detox diets and zero randomized trials of commercial ones.
- “You’ll keep the weight off.” Unlikely. Weight tends to come back once you eat normally again.
- “It gives you the nutrients you need.” Fiction. A day of it has under 2 grams of protein and up to 300 grams of sugar.
- “The salt water flush is harmless.” Risky for some. Two teaspoons of salt is about twice the daily sodium limit.
- “It was designed by a doctor.” Fiction. Its creator, Stanley Burroughs, was a self-styled healer convicted of practicing medicine without a license.
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