Can Lettuce Water Actually Help You Sleep?

Can lettuce help you sleep? According to a viral health hack making the rounds on TikTok, a steaming hot cup of lettuce water before bedtime is the key to falling asleep fast. On May 30, 2021, Shapla Hoque shared the tip on her TikTok account in a video that has now been viewed at least 7.8 million times.

And, in the months since, TikTokers around the world have also endorsed the nighttime ritual. Videos tagged with #lettucewater have been viewed a whopping 43.7 million times.

“Apparently drinking lettuce water makes you sleepy, so — sis don’t sleep, so I’m gonna try it out,” Hoque told viewers in her video.

She then poured boiling water in a cup full of iceberg lettuce leaves, adding a little peppermint tea for flavor. “Tastes like nothing,” she said after taking a sip.

In her next update she confirmed she was feeling “slightly drowsy.” And in the one after that, Hoque’s eyes were closed as she said: “Your sis is gone."

In a follow-up video Hoque posted on TikTok the next morning, she claimed it took her a total of “30 to 40 minutes” to fall asleep.

What Does the Science Say About Lettuce Water for Sleep?

Unlike many other TikTok trends, there is actually some science behind lettuce as a sleep aid. A study published in May 2017 in the journal Food Science Biotechnology has been heavily cited in support of lettuce water to improve sleep. The study specifically found that extracts of some varieties of lettuce, specifically red Romaine, induced an increase in the sleep duration of mice at low and high doses.

Michael Breus, PhD, a clinical psychologist and the author of multiple books about sleep, including The Power of When, points out that the study does little to support the hypothesis that lettuce water works as a sleep aid.

For one thing, he notes that lettuce extract isn’t what put the mice to sleep — it helped them sleep longer.

“These mice were drugged when given the lettuce,” he says, pointing out that the mice were injected with a dose of pentobarbital (a sedative) to put the animal to sleep soon after the extract was orally administered.

Furthermore, the study wasn’t set up to determine if the lettuce extract actually lessened the time it took the mice to fall asleep; it was designed to compare the sleep-inducing effects of green and red leaf lettuces.

All the mice in the study were separated from one another, and the researchers measured how long it took for each mouse to fall asleep (sleep latency) and how long each mouse slept (sleep duration). But any mice that didn’t sleep within 15 minutes of the injection were excluded from the final analysis.

The researchers then compared sleep latency and sleep duration among mice given the various types of lettuce, but they didn’t compare sleep latency and sleep duration to mice who hadn’t been given any lettuce extract. So there’s no way to know from these data if it was the sedative or the lettuce that contributed to the mice’s sleep — or if their sleep was quicker to come or longer than if they hadn’t been given any drugs or lettuce extract.

Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, an associate professor of nutritional medicine and the director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep & Circadian Research at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, points out that this study was done in rodents, and she’s not aware of any similar studies in humans.

Also noteworthy, she says, the researchers in the aforementioned study used romaine extract, which is a much more highly concentrated amount of the compounds in lettuce that supposedly make you sleepy than you would get by boiling lettuce leaves in water. “It is not clear how much of the actual active compound you would get from boiling lettuce and drinking the water, as suggested in the video,” she says.

Additionally, many of the TikTokers used iceberg lettuce for their experience, not the romaine that was used in the study. “Not all lettuces are equal — different types of lettuce have different components,” notes Dr. St-Onge.

Jackie Newgent, RDN, a New York City–based dietitian and the author of The Plant-Based Diabetes Cookbook, says that, hypothetically, lettuce could be a sleep-booster thanks to lactucin, a bitter plant compound, and antioxidant polyphenols. But lettuce water made with just a couple of lettuce leaves likely isn’t going to make much of a difference in terms of sleep.

Are There Any Health Risks if I Try the Lettuce Water Trend?

Ultimately, drinking lettuce water is harmless, Newgent says. But if you’re doing it to help you sleep, pay attention to quantity. It’s a liquid! “Drinking too much liquid right before bedtime can actually cause disrupted sleep, since you may need to make a bathroom trip or two in the middle of the night,” Newgent says.

Also, be sure you’re washing your lettuce before making a hot drink out of it, just as you would thoroughly wash lettuce before you eat it in a salad, Newgent says.

And one important caveat: See your doctor if you are regularly experiencing trouble falling asleep or any other sleep problems, says St-Onge. It may be fine to try drinking lettuce water to fall asleep easier one time. But if that doesn’t work, you need to find out what might be causing your insomnia, she notes.

The Takeaway

• Similar to other TikTok trends, there is little quality clinical research to support the claim that drinking lettuce water is an effective sleep aid.
• Although the overall risk of trying it is low, it’s likely better to just eat lettuce for it’s nutritional health benefits.
• Drinking too much of anything, including lettuce water, before you sleep is likely to have the opposite of the desired effect, as you’ll need to empty your bladder soon after dozing off.
• If you’re having trouble falling asleep, try more time-tested approaches like healthy sleep habits, or get help from your doctor.

Additional reporting by Katherine Lee.