Do Beets Help You Sleep? The Science Explained

Beets have earned a reputation as a superfood for exercise performance and heart health, but the case for them as a sleep aid is newer and built on thinner evidence. The strongest hint comes from research on beetroot juice in people with chronic lung disease, where a single dose appeared to improve the quality of sleep transitions and normalize patterns of deep and REM sleep, even though it did not add more total sleep time. The likely mechanism runs through nitric oxide, a molecule your body makes from the nitrate concentrated in beets, which happens to be deeply involved in the brain’s own sleep-regulating chemistry. The science here is genuinely interesting, but it is also preliminary, and the distance between “plausible biological pathway” and “drink beet juice before bed and sleep better” is larger than wellness marketing suggests.

How Beets Become Nitric Oxide

Beets are one of the richest dietary sources of inorganic nitrate. When you eat or drink them, bacteria on the back of your tongue convert nitrate into nitrite, and your body then converts nitrite into nitric oxide (NO). This nitrate-nitrite-NO pathway is a well-established route for raising NO levels throughout the body, with documented effects on blood vessels, blood pressure, and oxygen delivery to tissues.¹ Beetroot has attracted particular attention because a single glass of juice can raise plasma nitrate levels nearly tenfold within hours.²

What makes this relevant to sleep is that NO is not just a blood-vessel molecule. It is also a signaling molecule in the brain, and its role in sleep regulation has been studied for decades.

Nitric Oxide and the Brain’s Sleep Machinery

Researchers have known since the 1990s that nitric oxide helps regulate both slow-wave sleep (the deep, restorative kind) and REM sleep (the stage associated with dreaming). In animal studies, injecting an NO donor into a brainstem region called the pedunculopontine tegmentum increased slow-wave sleep by about 42% and REM sleep by about 72%, while blocking NO production in the same area cut both stages by roughly the same amount.³ NO-producing neurons overlap with the cholinergic neurons in the brainstem that are central to generating sleep states, and NO acts as a local signal that modulates their activity.⁴

Separately, NO produced by a different enzyme in the basal forebrain plays a role in the homeostatic sleep drive, the pressure to sleep that builds the longer you stay awake. After sleep deprivation, this enzyme ramps up NO production in wake-active neurons, and that signal promotes recovery sleep.⁵ A review of this body of work concluded that NO production makes a key contribution to daily homeostatic sleep, including both slow-wave and REM stages.⁶

So the logic is straightforward: beets raise NO, and NO helps regulate sleep. The question is whether eating a vegetable can deliver enough NO to the right places in the brain to actually matter. That is a much harder question, and one that remains mostly unanswered.

The One Study That Directly Tested Beets and Sleep

Only one published trial has directly measured what beetroot juice does to a person’s sleep architecture, and it was conducted in a specific population: people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). These patients often have disrupted sleep because low oxygen levels and airway problems interfere with normal sleep staging. In a placebo-controlled crossover design, patients drank either concentrated beetroot juice or a nitrate-depleted placebo before a night of sleep monitoring.

Beetroot juice did not change total sleep time or the overall amount of time spent in any individual sleep stage. What it did change was the quality of transitions between stages. On the beetroot night, abnormal transitions from wakefulness directly into lighter sleep stages and directly into REM sleep were less frequent. These kinds of abrupt transitions are hallmarks of disordered sleep, and seeing fewer of them suggests smoother, more organized cycling through sleep stages. In the last two hours of the night, the beetroot group also spent more time in REM sleep and showed signs of normalized deep-sleep brain waves.²

There was also a noteworthy finding for oxygen levels: beetroot juice kept blood oxygen saturation higher during periods of wakefulness after sleep onset. For COPD patients, who tend to desaturate at night, that is clinically meaningful. But the effect on sleep transitions is the piece most relevant to the general question of whether beets help sleep quality.

The honest assessment: this is a single, small study in a disease population. It does not prove that healthy people who drink beet juice will sleep better. But it does show that, in a real human trial with polysomnography (the gold standard of sleep measurement), dietary nitrate from beets produced measurable changes in sleep physiology that went in the right direction. That is more than most supposed “sleep foods” can claim.

Nighttime Blood Pressure and What It Means for Sleep

One of the best-documented effects of beetroot juice is lowering blood pressure, and this effect extends into the nighttime hours. Blood pressure naturally dips during sleep, and the magnitude and stability of that dip matter for cardiovascular health and sleep quality. People whose blood pressure stays elevated or swings erratically at night tend to have lighter, more fragmented sleep.

A meta-analysis of individual participant data found that beetroot juice significantly decreased nighttime blood pressure variability in people under 65. Those who had the biggest rise in nitrite levels after drinking the juice saw the largest reductions in nighttime systolic blood pressure, averaging a few points lower.⁷ In a separate pilot study of people with uncontrolled hypertension, beetroot juice reduced nighttime diastolic blood pressure by about 6 points.⁸

These are not enormous drops, but for someone whose elevated nighttime blood pressure contributes to restlessness, even modest stabilization could translate into more restful sleep. This is indirect evidence, though. Neither study measured sleep quality itself. The connection from “lower nocturnal blood pressure” to “better sleep” is plausible physiology, not a demonstrated outcome.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea and the Morning Blood Pressure Surge

People with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) face a distinctive cardiovascular risk: repeated drops in oxygen during the night trigger surges in blood pressure and sympathetic nervous system activity, especially in the early morning hours. That early-morning blood pressure spike is associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Researchers tested whether beetroot juice could blunt this response in OSA patients.

In a randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial, patients who received placebo saw their systolic blood pressure rise by about 8 points during simulated hypoxic conditions. Those who drank beetroot juice, at either a low or high dose, showed no significant rise in blood pressure under the same conditions. The researchers attributed this to beetroot-derived nitric oxide blunting the peripheral chemoreflex, the oxygen-sensing mechanism that drives the blood pressure surge.⁹

This study did not measure sleep quality either, but for people with OSA, suppressing that early-morning cardiovascular spike is a meaningful benefit in its own right. If you have OSA and are already on treatment, this is the kind of finding worth discussing with your doctor. It is proof-of-concept, not a treatment recommendation.

Beets Contain Melatonin, but Not Much

Beets do contain small amounts of melatonin, the hormone most people associate with sleep. Research has shown that eating melatonin-rich foods can raise serum melatonin levels and may assist sleep, particularly in people dealing with insomnia.¹⁰ Tart cherries, for instance, have been studied for this reason and contain meaningful melatonin concentrations.

Beets, however, are not among the highest melatonin-containing foods. The amounts are low enough that researchers investigating the sleep effects of beetroot have focused almost entirely on the nitrate pathway rather than melatonin content. If melatonin from beets contributes to any sleep benefit, it is likely a minor supporting player, not the main act. You would get far more melatonin from foods like tart cherries, grapes, or walnuts, or from a supplement.

Muscle Soreness, Recovery, and Sleeping Comfortably

Anyone who has tried to sleep with sore muscles knows that physical discomfort can wreck a night’s rest. Beetroot juice has shown some promise for reducing post-exercise muscle pain and speeding recovery, which creates an indirect path to better sleep for active people.

In one trial, participants who drank beetroot juice after repeated sprinting recovered their jump performance and reactive strength faster than those on a placebo, with meaningful differences still visible 72 hours later.¹¹ Another study compared beetroot juice head-to-head with sodium nitrate (pure nitrate without the other beet compounds) and a placebo after eccentric exercise designed to cause muscle damage. Beetroot juice was better at reducing pain sensitivity than either alternative, and the researchers concluded that the analgesic effect likely comes from phytonutrients in the beet beyond nitrate alone, or from interactions between them.¹²

This matters because it suggests that beet juice offers something a nitrate pill cannot. The betalains, polyphenols, and other compounds in beets appear to contribute anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects that work alongside nitrate. If you exercise regularly and find that muscle soreness disrupts your sleep, the recovery benefits of beetroot juice could be more relevant to your sleep quality than the NO-brainstem pathway ever will be.

Heart Rate Variability and the Relaxation Response

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a measure of how much your heart rate fluctuates from beat to beat, and higher HRV generally indicates a nervous system that can shift smoothly between sympathetic (“fight or flight”) and parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) modes. People with higher HRV tend to fall asleep faster and sleep more deeply. There is some evidence that beetroot juice nudges HRV in a favorable direction.

A study in African-American women found that beetroot juice increased a standard HRV measure (SDNN) at rest, suggesting enhanced parasympathetic tone.¹³ Another trial in men performing resistance training found that beetroot juice changed the pattern of HRV recovery during exercise, with a lower internal physiological load compared to placebo.¹⁴ Neither study measured sleep directly, but the autonomic shift they describe is the kind that would theoretically make it easier to transition into sleep, particularly after a physically demanding day.

Your Mouth Bacteria Matter More Than You Think

The nitrate-to-NO conversion depends on bacteria living on your tongue. Without them, the dietary nitrate in beets largely goes to waste. This is why mouthwash that kills oral bacteria has been shown to blunt the blood-pressure-lowering effects of nitrate-rich foods. If you are drinking beet juice for any health purpose and also using a strong antibacterial mouthwash, you may be undermining the very pathway you are trying to activate.

A recent four-week study of daily beetroot juice consumption found that it shifted the composition of the oral microbiome, increasing the relative abundance of Neisseria bacteria (which are efficient nitrate reducers) and decreasing Veillonella. The intestinal microbiome was not significantly affected.¹⁵ This means that consistent beet consumption may actually prime your oral microbiome to become better at converting nitrate over time, potentially amplifying the benefits of each subsequent dose. It also means that people vary in how well they convert dietary nitrate based on their existing oral bacteria, which could partly explain why some people seem to respond more strongly to beetroot supplementation than others.

Juice, Whole Beets, or Supplements

Most of the research on beets and health outcomes, including the sleep study, used concentrated beetroot juice. This is not a coincidence: juice concentrates the nitrate into a manageable volume. A typical research dose provides around 400 to 800 milligrams of nitrate, roughly equivalent to two or three whole beets condensed into a small shot.

Cooking beets changes their nutrient profile. Thermal processing can actually increase the availability of certain nutrients like folate and beta-carotene by releasing them from their bound forms in the plant matrix.¹⁶ However, boiling beets in water can leach nitrate into the cooking liquid. If nitrate is what you are after, roasting retains more than boiling, and raw or juiced beets retain the most.

Concentrated beetroot powders and capsules exist, but the evidence base is almost entirely built on juice. Some products also strip out the betalains and polyphenols during processing, which may matter given the muscle-pain research showing that nitrate alone is less effective than the whole juice. If you are experimenting with beets for sleep, juice is the form that most closely matches what researchers have actually tested.

Practical Considerations and Timing

Plasma nitrate levels peak roughly two to three hours after drinking beetroot juice, so if sleep benefits depend on the nitrate-NO pathway, drinking it at dinner or a couple of hours before bed makes the most sense. The COPD sleep study gave patients the juice in the evening before an overnight sleep recording, which aligns with this timing.

There are a few practical things worth knowing. Beetroot juice will turn your urine and stool pink or red, which is harmless but can be alarming if you are not expecting it. The sugar content of beet juice is not trivial, roughly 20 to 25 grams per concentrated serving, which may matter if you are managing blood sugar. And because beets lower blood pressure, people already on antihypertensive medications should be cautious about adding a concentrated dose, particularly in the evening when blood pressure naturally drops. Overcorrection could cause dizziness or lightheadedness.

People taking blood thinners should also be aware that the high vitamin K content of beet greens (though not the root itself) can interact with medications like warfarin. The root and its juice have low vitamin K and are generally safe in this regard, but it is worth distinguishing between the two parts of the plant.

What Beets Cannot Do for Your Sleep

It is worth being clear about the boundaries. Beets are not a treatment for insomnia. No study has shown that beetroot juice helps healthy people with normal sleep fall asleep faster or stay asleep longer. The single sleep-architecture study was conducted in people whose sleep was already disrupted by a chronic disease, and even then, the effect was on the quality of sleep transitions rather than total sleep duration. There are no trials in people with primary insomnia, no trials comparing beets to established sleep aids, and no dose-response data telling you how much you would need to drink for any given effect.

The broader nitrate-NO-sleep connection, while biologically compelling, was mostly established in animal studies using direct brain injections of NO donors, a far cry from eating a root vegetable and hoping the nitrate finds its way to the right neurons. Dietary nitrate clearly raises systemic NO, and systemic NO clearly does things that are friendly to sleep, like lowering blood pressure and improving blood flow. Whether it meaningfully alters brainstem NO signaling enough to change your subjective experience of sleep is simply not known yet.

If you enjoy beets and are looking for a dietary addition that has real cardiovascular benefits and plausible (if unproven) sleep-quality effects, drinking some beet juice in the evening is a reasonable and low-risk experiment. If you are struggling with genuine sleep problems, though, the evidence is not yet strong enough to put beets ahead of better-established interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, consistent sleep schedules, or even the more studied sleep-friendly foods like tart cherries and kiwifruit.