Will Drinking Lettuce Water Help You Sleep Better?

12.07.2024 - 15:43 / bhg.com

Getting a good night’s sleep is key to maintaining your wellbeing. Sleep makes up a third of every person’s life, but some 50 to 70 million people in the U.S. struggle with easily falling asleep. So when videos of people drinking lettuce water to supposedly help induce sleep started making their way around social media, it’s no surprise that many people jumped on the trend. But is lettuce water actually a good DIY sleep aid?

As it turns out, people have been using herbal teas to help fall asleep for centuries.

“Steeping wild grasses and leaves have been part of that nighttime tradition and using Lactuca sativa [lettuce], technically an herb, is a newer twist on that process,” says Christina Meyer-Jax, RDN, a health advisor for Lifesum.

In the #lettucewater videos (with millions of views, and counting), all you have to do is grab some romaine lettuce leaves and cover them with boiling water. Let the leaves wilt for a few minutes, drink up, and (apparently) you should soon be feeling drowsy enough to fall asleep.

Before you drown your precious salad greens in water, though, check out what our experts have to say about the potential benefits of drinking lettuce water.

Better Homes & Gardens

“Lettuce has a compound in it called lactucin, which has several potential health benefits,” says Stephanie Nelson, RD, of MyFitnessPal. “One study looked at lactucin’s properties as a potential sedative in mice, leading to the belief that lactucin can help aid sleep.”

Nelson points out this has not been widely tested enough to definitely say that lettuce tea would help people sleep. Basically, the potential is there, but we don’t have enough research to know for sure that it works. Many times, foods that have a theoretical effect don’t