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I'm not a great sleeper — I routinely function on roughly five hours — so I'm open to trying anything that'll help me catch some Zs.
OK, so I'm not great at putting down my phone before bed, but I live online so that feels impossible. But when lettuce water started going viral on TikTok as a sleep aid, I figured, sure, let's give it a go. So, yes, last night before bed I drank a mug of lettuce tea.
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In case you haven't seen viral lettuce water TikToks, it is — disturbingly — exactly what it sounds like. Picture making a nice cup of tea, except instead of steeping a tea bag you are dunking leaves of lettuce in hot water. Then you drink that cabbagey concoction. This remedy, supposedly, makes you quite sleepy. Somehow, this has become A Thing all over TikTok.
The process began with going to the closest grocery store and picking up a decent looking bag of romaine (shouts to Ozzie's Fresh Market). I've seen all kinds of lettuce used in TikToks, but I selected romaine because I like romaine salads and I figured I shouldn't be wasteful with the leftovers.
I washed roughly four or five leaves of romaine. From there, I heated up a mug of water and — lord help me — dunked them in.
Making lettuce water is simple but feels quite wrong. Credit: Tim Marcin / Mashable I let the lettuce, erm, steep, until the leaves look thoroughly soggy and I could smell a cabbagey aroma coming off the mug. From there, I removed the lettuce — except for a few chunks of romaine that broke off — and well, there was nothing to do but sip.
Sip I did. It wasn't the grossest thing in the world. It wasn't pleasant, mind you, but it wasn't awful. My notes on the taste read:
Tastes exactly like...lettuce water
Weirdly thick? Can water be thick?
Savory water. Like chicken stock except cabbagey
Imagine drinking tea that has a sulfuric, earthy aftertaste — that's lettuce water. Unlike tea, the water didn't really change color or anything, but trust me when I say it had a distinct lettucey taste and odd viscosity.
I gulped through most of the mug but, admittedly, dumped the last sip or two because it was filled with chunks of romaine.
I used my Newseum mug for this super important jounalistic endeavor. Credit: Tim Marcin / Mashable Now, the million dollar question: Did it make me sleepy? TL;DR: Not really. I was already kind of sleepy before the mug of lettuce, but it didn't make me extra drowsy. In fact, I made the lettuce water shortly before 11 p.m. and ended up not being able to pass out until after 1 a.m. Another not so great night of sleep.
To be fair, however, I have always had trouble sleeping and most remedies don't tire me out. Benadryl, for instance, does nothing to make me drowsy. Other folks have reported it actually does work for them, so I could be in the minority here. In fact, a 2017 study showed romaine can help with sleep, noting "seed and leaf extracts derived from romaine lettuce induced an increase in the sleep duration at low and high doses respectively."
"Romaine lettuce is an interesting and valuable source of sleep potentiating material," the study in the journal Food Science and Biotechnologyread.
Still, will I be drinking lettuce water before bed any time soon? Probably not, since it didn't really work for me. But I will be making a salad this weekend. So that's something.