IANS , New York | Updated: February 04, 2015 12:36 IST
Drinking a glass of tart or sour cherry juice in the morning and the evening can help older insomniacs sleep better and also stay safe, a new study suggests. Drinking Montmorency tart cherry (grown mostly in the US, Canada and France) juice twice a day for two weeks helped increase sleep time by nearly 90 minutes among older adults with insomnia.
"Sleeping pills may be an option for younger insomniacs, but for older people these medications quadruple the risk of falling, which can lead to broken hips and, often, earlier death," said Frank L. Greenway of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University in the US.
Montmorency tart cherries are a natural source of melatonin - a hormone that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle. While previous studies have also suggested that tart cherry juice has sleep-enhancing benefits, the study set out to help explain why.
