TikTok Promises That Tart Cherry Juice Will Improve Your Sleep – We Asked The Experts
Waking up during the night? Struggling to fall asleep in the first place? Well, according to TikTok, you could solve your problems with just a glass of fruit juice.
Yes really, specifically tart cherry juice.
A video by TikTok creator, Alana (@missalanablack), went viral after she shared that drinking the juice before bed has transformed her sleep schedule.
She says in the clip: “Why didn’t I know about cherry juice earlier? I have taken so many supplements to help me go to sleep, stay asleep...all I needed was some cherry juice?
“I saw a video on here that said, ‘Drink one cup and you’ll be out.’ Fifteen minutes in and I was out. I didn’t wake up once through the night. So, if you haven’t tried it and you’re having trouble sleeping, baby, get you some tart cherry juice. It works.”
And it turns out that it’s not just Alana who is praising the juice’s ‘insomnia-busting’ effects – videos tagged with ‘tart cherry extract’ on TikTok have racked up a whopping 181.6M views collectively.
@missalanablack I might’ve taken too much, I didn’t wake up until 10:30 today lmfao ???? #cherryjuice#melatonin
♬ original sound - Cruz Acosta-Machain
But what do the experts say? Will drinking a glass of the juice actually knock us out cold and give us the best sleep of our lives?
Well, as it turns out, yes.
Nutritional therapy practitioner, Megan Abbott, took to TikTok to lay out from a medical perspective whether the drink will actually aid sleep.
“There’s a lot of hype around tart cherry juice right now and is it really worth it? Well the studies are actually pretty clear, so yes.′
“If you have issues sleeping, falling asleep at night or staying asleep, [tart cherry juice] does have a little bit of tryptophan in it, which can help boost melatonin production, which is going to help you sleep a little bit better.”
Dr Shelby Harris, Director of Sleep Health at Sleepopolis agrees, explaining that the more melatonin (the hormone that controls sleep) the better you’ll sleep – and tart cherry juice is packed full of the stuff.
However, it won’t cure all sleep problems she warns.
“The melatonin in tart cherry juice may help some get better sleep if you have the occasional bad night here and there, but it’s most likely not going to be the cure for chronic insomnia that a lot of people make it out to be,” the expert explains.