Are tart cherries a natural dose of melatonin?
Short answerNo
On this page
No. Tart cherries do contain melatonin, but very little by tablet standards. You’d need about 49 pounds of Montmorency cherries to get the melatonin in one 0.3 mg tablet, and a cup holds about 0.002 mg. Tart cherry juice concentrate did lengthen sleep a little in a 20-person trial, but nobody has shown the melatonin was the reason.
What we’d do
Drink tart cherry juice if you like it, and don’t count it as melatonin. If you want melatonin, a 0.3 to 0.5 mg tablet at the right hour gives you a measured dose that matches a normal night. If you want more time asleep, start with a fixed wake time and the light plan.
If you remember three things
- 49 pounds of cherries for 0.3 mg. A 10 mg gummy holds as much as about 1,640 pounds.
- A cup holds about 0.002 mg. That’s under a hundredth of a normal night’s peak.
- The juice trial was small and short. 20 people, one week each way.
Why it seems obvious
It started with a good headline. In 2001, researchers at the University of Texas found that tart cherries contain melatonin, at levels high compared with what’s in mammal blood. They wrote that eating cherries could be an important source of dietary melatonin. A glass of juice sounds like the gentle version of a pill.
Counting decaf as coffee
Counting cherries as a melatonin dose is like counting decaf as your morning coffee. There is some caffeine in decaf. Nobody drinks it for the kick.
The melatonin in a cherry is real. It’s just a tiny amount next to what a tablet holds.
How much is in a cherry?
The 2001 study measured fresh-frozen tart cherries of two kinds. Montmorency cherries held about 13.46 nanograms of melatonin per gram, and Balaton cherries about 2.06, roughly six times less. The orchard and the harvest time didn’t change the amount.
A nanogram is a millionth of a milligram, so here’s what that means in tablets, using the richer Montmorency cherries:
| Melatonin | Tart cherries with the same amount |
|---|---|
| A cup of cherries, about 155 g | about 0.002 mg |
| 0.3 mg, about one normal night’s peak | about 49 lb |
| 1 mg | about 164 lb |
| 5 mg | about 819 lb |
| 10 mg | about 1,640 lb |
The 0.3 mg row is the one to remember. A 1994 MIT study found 0.3 mg brings blood levels into the normal range for a night, and a 2001 study found it restored sleep in poor sleepers over 50. Matching that would mean eating cherries by the crate.
What the juice trial found
In 2012, researchers at Northumbria University in England gave 20 healthy adults tart cherry juice concentrate or a placebo drink for 7 days each, in random order, without telling them which. They measured sleep with wrist monitors and collected urine to measure a breakdown product of melatonin.
On the cherry juice, total melatonin in the urine went up, and time in bed, total sleep and sleep efficiency all rose. The timing of their melatonin rhythm didn’t change.
It’s an interesting result. But it was 20 people for a week, and it can’t tell whether melatonin in the juice did it or something else in the cherries. Concentrate also isn’t the same as eating fresh cherries.
The best case for cherries
“The juice trial worked, so who cares how it works?” Fair enough, if you enjoy it. A small gain in sleep from a drink you like is a fine thing to try, and you can test it on yourself the same way as melatonin, with the two-week test.
What it isn’t is a melatonin dose. It won’t move your body clock the way 0.5 mg at the right hour does, and it won’t help you time a trip. If melatonin is what you’re after, why less is often enough has the measured way to take it.
4 sources
- Burkhardt S and others, Detection and quantification of the antioxidant melatonin in Montmorency and Balaton tart cherries, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2001pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Howatson G and others, Effect of tart cherry juice (Prunus cerasus) on melatonin levels and enhanced sleep quality, European Journal of Nutrition, 2012pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Dollins AB and others, Effect of inducing nocturnal serum melatonin concentrations in daytime on sleep, mood, body temperature, and performance, PNAS, 1994pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Zhdanova IV and others, Melatonin treatment for age-related insomnia, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2001pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
