I Tried TikTok’s Boiled Lettuce Tea Hack To See If It’d Help Me Sleep
If you’re someone who wastes a lot of time on TikTok, you’ll know the app is full of different life hacks and tips. The latest one to take off is for all the sleep-deprived people out there and the hack is really quite simple: drink some boiled lettuce water.
Before you shriek and click out of this article, let me explain.
TikTok user @shapla_11 recently went viral after claiming boiled lettuce water helped her get to sleep. She simply dunked some lettuce in a mug, filled it with boiling water, let it sit for 10 minutes, then guzzled it down.
Not long after, voila! Sleep!
@shapla_11if you can’t sleep, try this ##lettucewater ##insomnia ##lifehacks ##fyp♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod
As you can see by the video, she claimed the lettuce really was that bitch and helped her relax and knock TF out.
As someone who is often sleep-deprived and suffering from bouts of insomnia, this all seemed too good to be true. A full night of sleep and all I have to do is drink some lettuce water?
Sign me up.
I decided to try TikTok’s lettuce water hack to see if it’d really help me sleep.
The first step is to commit to your mission. I had to make sure none of my coworkers were going to battle me for this article right. Walkleys don’t win themselves, after all.
Next, I set out my intentions. I find sometimes if you speak your truth and mission out loud, it makes you stick to your goal.
i'm going to drink the boiled lettuce water
— Tahlia Pritchard (@Tahls) June 2, 2021
Then I had to go buy lettuce. I am one of those people who has now given up lettuce to only eat spinach and rocket. Buying lettuce reminded me that as a kid, all I used to eat for lunch was plain lettuce sandwiches (white bread, no butter) and I didn’t have insomnia as a kid. Makes you think.
With my lettuce bought, I then had to wait for a decent time to make the tea in order to go to sleep. I kept one eye on the clock and one eye on Home and Away. 7pm seemed too early to kick off my lettuce juice, even if I had nothing else to achieve that night but sleep.
Eventually 8:15pm rolled around and I got to work. I changed into some comfy clothes, grabbed my sleep mask, and boiled the kettle to make my delicious nighttime beverage.
I cooked! I made it nice!
Let’s just say, if I had my time again, I’d probably buy a whole lettuce rather than a chopped up bag of cos lettuce. When it came to steeping it for 10 minutes then removing said lettuce, trying to remove all the little shredded pieces really took some time.
Eventually I just gave up and drank it, shredded pieces and all.
Yes, that is a meme mug.
The boiled lettuce tea was surprisingly easy to drink. There was no strong flavour – this could be because lettuce is extremely water-rich anyway. Minus the tiny shredded pieces, it was easy to finish the boiled lettuce tea off within a couple of minutes (noting that it was now lukewarm and not super hot).
— Tahlia Pritchard (@Tahls) June 2, 2021
I finished the drink at approximately 8:30pm and got ready for bed, settling in by 9pm. Everyone I know was super impressed with my efforts.
Now whether it was because I was wasting time on social media — instead of getting into a relaxed mode — I wasn’t finding myself overly sleepy after 9pm. Tbh, all I felt was hungry.
I decided to finally put my phone away and focus in on something that would relax me instead: the latest episode of Real Housewives of New York.
I got 20 minutes in before shutting my laptop. This takes us to approximately 9:40pm, a little over an hour since I drank my lettuce tea. And before you know it…
Sleep!
Did the boiled lettuce tea really work?
I went into a light sleep before 10pm, waking up a bit before 11pm to get up and go to the toilet (maybe I had to pee all my lettuce tea out). But after I crawled back into bed, I was once again out like a light.
Was it the lettuce tea? Was it the fact I did quite a strenuous gym session that day? Was I just tired?
The other interesting part was for someone who is used to averaging around five hours of sleep per night, when my alarm went off at 6:30ish the next morning, I snoozed it and fell asleep again until a bit after 7am.
What’s the science behind the boiled lettuce tea?
Lettuce actually contains a phytonutrient called lactucarium, which is said to promote relaxation and induce sleep – in particular, romaine lettuce is meant to be very good for this. So if you’re not up for a salad for dinner, researchers have been saying for quite some time that lettuce tea or lettuce seed oil can help your quality of sleep. A study into this also showed that not only did lettuce increase sleep duration in mice, but it also protected cells against inflammation during sleep disturbances.
So there you go, folks. Next time you’re struggling to sleep, try boiling some lettuce.
