Drinking this juice before bed can get you 84 minutes more sleep

Nothing worse than waking up in the morning after a single hour of sleep. Whether it’s your fault or not, it’s a bad feeling - particularly if you had the available sleep-space there, but instead you spent the night staring at the ceiling, contemplating life, death and the fact you had your flies open all day today. Doesn’t set you up for a productive day at work, does it?

So what do you do to help you drift off to the land of recharge - the place to nod your batteries? I mean, there’s counting sheep (doesn’t work), Night Nurse (works too well and makes getting up impossible) or imagining a brick wall (which is what I do to varying effect). It’s either that or drink cherry juice, right?

Yep, according to a recent study, knocking back a glass of cherry juice - once when you wake up and once before bed - will help you get that ‘much needed’ beauty sleep. 

Published in the American Journal of Therapeutics, the research found that drinking specifically Montmorency tart cherry juice gave volunteers about an average of an hour and 24 minutes extra nappy schnoo schnoo each night. Annoying if that extra time was after their alarms went off of course, but sleep is sleep.

Researchers gathered a bunch of guinea pigs (human ones) and gave them either a placebo or a tarty cherry juice (oo-er) to drink twice a day, then they were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their sleeping habits. After two weeks, the placebos and juices were swapped, before eventually a final questionnaire was filled out. What a lark for all involved, I think you’ll agree.

Turns out that those that downed a cold glass of CJ hoiked up their sleepy time by an average of 84 minutes per night and their overall sleep efficiency increased on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index.

The reason for this is that the Montmorency cherry drink contains compounds that inhibit the production of sleep-depriving chemicals in the old noggin. It also reduces levels of kynurenine in the blood, a substance that also leads to poor sleep. Aside from that, chezza juice is also high in procyanidins and anthocyanins, which are pretty good for you, as it happens, and can help reduce inflammation. And nobody wants inflammation, trust me.

So, it’s not exactly hiding in your local supermarket’s juice aisle, but it’s still mega easy to get hold of (Waitrose does it, obviously), and you can also get it in tablet form, should you have a debilitating fear of drinking.

So pop your cherry and have a good night’s sleep. Interestingly, that also works in a more metaphorical sense.

(Image: Brooke Lark)