Lying in bed unable to sleep, watching the hours tick by on your bedside clock is incredibly frustrating. If you’re one of the 70 million Americans who have chronic sleep problems, there’s a good chance you’ve tried every sleep hack under the, well, moon. Herbal tea with a pajama-clad bear on the packaging, a soothing soundtrack of wind chimes and rain, over-the-counter meds, prescription meds … but what if the solution to your sleep problems has been hiding in the crisper all along? If you reach for your phone in the middle of the night to scroll TikTok, you may come across a video that’s been liked over 1.5 million times claiming that sipping lettuce water before bed is the secret to drifting off to dreamland. The user, Shapla Hoque, shares in the video that she has trouble sleeping so she decided to give it a shot. She shows exactly how to make it, filling a mug with romaine lettuce and boiling water, allowing it to steep for several minutes. (She also adds peppermint for taste, but says peppermint has never made her sleepy before.) Later in the video, Hoque says she’s starting to feel drowsy. She ends the video by saying that it does, in fact, work. In the comments, she specifies that she fell asleep within 30 to 40 minutes after drinking her lettuce water. In the thousands of comments, many other TikTok users say want to try it, too. Some proclaim that it’s worked for them as well. “This worked for me after not sleeping at all for the whole night,” one user commented. Others say they tried it and it didn’t work for them. But instead of trying to decipher if random people on social media are to be believed, it would be better to dig into the science and to ask sleep experts if this is actually a legitimate sleep solution. What’s the verdict on this viral sleep hack? Let’s get into it.
What sleep experts think about sipping lettuce water before bedtime
WhenDr. Jade Wu, PhD, DBSM, a behavioral sleep medicine specialist and researcher at Duke University School of Medicine, heard about lettuce water being used for sleep, she was skeptical. “There are so many ‘miracle cures’ for sleep problems that are trending,” she says. “I certainly don’t blame people for wanting such an easy fix for insomnia, but I’m usually skeptical when something seems too good to be true.” Registered dietitian Sonya Angelone, MS, RDN, feels similarly. “There are always sensational claims about food, nutrients, and supplements—it’s clickbait,” she says. Dr. Rachel Salas, MD, the assistant medical director at Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep and Wellness, says she’s happy people are talking about sleep solutions more, but she says there’s a lack of evidence behind this particular cure. In fact, there’s only one study that has been done to see if lettuce can be used for sleep and the subjects were mice, not humans. In the study, published in 2017 in the journal Food Science and Biotechnology, researchers found a connection between romaine lettuce extract and the amount of time it took for the mice given the extract to fall asleep. But Dr. Angelone says the study has several limitations that make the results less than miraculous. First, she points out that the study did not include a control group of mice not given lettuce water. Second, Dr. Angelone says that consuming lettuce extract is different than straight-up lettuce water because an extract is much more concentrated. Perhaps most noteworthy is that she says the mice were also given a sedative. “The mice were drugged to put the animals to sleep soon after they took the lettuce water,” she says. Clearly, the one study about lettuce being used for sleep has some serious flaws. So then why does it seem to work for so many people on TikTok?
Why drinking lettuce water before bed seems to be working for some people
All three experts have the same inkling as to why Hoque—and some others on social media—are declaring lettuce water the sleep aid everyone has been waiting for. Two words: placebo effect. “If someone doesn’t have a true sleep disorder, or their insomnia is mild, a nice placebo effect from the lettuce water can certainly help,” Dr. Wu says. “After all, a big part of why people have insomnia is the fear of having insomnia itself. Having confidence in a ‘miracle cure’ like lettuce water may take away that fear and allow sleep to come.” Dr. Salas believes there’s more power in the ritual of sipping something before bed than the lettuce water itself. “Putting a positive intention behind something—’I am doing this because it will relax me and help me sleep’—can have an effect,” she says. But she also says that what will work even better is getting to the root cause of the sleeping problem itself. For example, if someone has insomnia because they are kept up worrying about work, a relationship, COVID, or something else, talking to a therapist to treat these anxieties will be more effective. “If you are having trouble sleeping on a regular basis, it’s also a good idea to meet with a sleep doctor because you may have an undiagnosed sleep disorder,” Dr. Salas adds. If you do want to sip something for bed that could help you sleep, Angelone recommends brewing a tea with chamomile, lavender, valerian root, passionflower, or lemon bark—all herbs that have been linked to relaxation, something lettuce water has not been firmly been shown to do. But she reiterates that the real power is more in taking the time to unwind before bed, not necessarily in the herbs themselves. According to the experts, drinking lettuce water before bed isn’t going to harm you; it’s just not going to help much either. With no science to back it up, this is one sleep myth that can firmly be put to bed. Next up, find out how many hours of sleep a night you actually need, according to experts.
Sources
Dr. Jade Wu, PhD, DBSM, behavioral sleep medicine specialist and researcher at Duke University School of MedicineDr. Rachel Salas, MD, assistant medical director at Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep and WellnessSonya Angelone, MS, RDN, registered dietitian and nutritionist
