Explorers still haven’t discovered the fountain of youth. However, you might combat aging—and stop fretting over every laugh line—with a particularly tart fruit.
Lemons? Limes? Not quite. The bedtime-friendly fruit that’s beneficial for your skin and sure to make your lips pucker is the sour cherry.
Don’t confuse the sour cherry with its sweeter counterpart. Sour cherries are generally smaller than sweet cherries and are seldom eaten fresh in large quantities due to their tartness. They’re often dried for use as toppings, incorporated fresh into sweetened baked goods, or made into other products like tart cherry juice.
In fact, tart cherry juice has become more prevalent in stores, partly because it’s widely recognized as a natural sleep aid. This is because tart cherries contain melatonin and tryptophan, both linked to inducing sleepiness. (Here’s why tryptophan makes you feel tired.) And while sour cherries contain modest amounts of melatonin and tryptophan, it’s enough to make a difference.
A 2023 review in Current Sleep Medicine Reports highlights that approximately 100 grams of fresh tart cherries provide around 0.135 micrograms of melatonin and 9 grams of tryptophan. Though these quantities are well below the recommended dosages for sleep enhancement, according to the review, they seem sufficient to be effective.
Drink up before bedding down
Melatonin and tryptophan are not the only nutrients in pure sour cherry juice that help you achieve better sleep. As registered dietitian Beth Czerwony notes in a Cleveland Clinic article, the enzymes in sour cherries enhance the fruit’s sleep-promoting properties. Czerwony explains that tart cherries “keep tryptophan in the body longer,” aiding you in falling asleep faster and staying asleep longer.
Consuming tart cherry juice appears to be an effective remedy for people with insomnia, not just for those looking to reduce restless nights or who have tried various methods to fall asleep without success.
A 2018 study in the American Journal of Therapeutics investigated the effects of drinking tart cherry juice twice daily for two weeks on subjects aged 50+ with insomnia. The study presented evidence supporting tart cherry juice as a means to improve overall sleep quality and duration. Moreover, the study noted that tart cherry juice increased the bioavailability of tryptophan.
While this is great news if you’ve been dealing with sleep deficiency for too long, it’s not the only reason to consider sour cherries and their byproducts. Another reason to include sour cherries in your diet is their potential to prevent your skin from looking older than your biological age.
Fewer systemic stressors for more radiant skin
How do sour cherries impact the skin? A 2017 review in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition identified two key benefits of tart cherries related to anti-aging: reducing inflammation and minimizing oxidative stress.
As a 2018 paper from Clinical Interventions in Aging noted, less oxidative stress and inflammation in the body result in less damage. This keeps the skin healthier, ultimately reflecting youthfulness thanks to a steady supply of antioxidants. Tart cherries are rich in antioxidants, including anti-inflammatory phenolic compounds.
It’s clear that there’s much to appreciate about tart cherries. However, they are still a source of sugar. For every 100 grams of tart cherries consumed, you’ll ingest over 8 grams of sugar. Even though it’s naturally occurring sugar, it qualifies as free sugar per the World Health Organization, so its intake should be moderated. Thus, if you’re aiming to keep your consumption within the recommended daily sugar limits of 25 grams for women or 36 grams for men, you may need to balance eating tart cherries or drinking tart cherry juice with less sweet foods.
