5 Top Benefits & Uses Of Tart Cherry Juice For Gout, Sleep, Arthritis & Inflammation

We have a beautiful tart cherry tree in our farm that produces ample tart cherry fruits. I use the tart cherries for making jam and juice. Once when I was reading a journal, it had a page devoted to the benefits of drinking tart cherry juice. Actually I was quite surprised that I was so unaware of the wonderful benefits of the juice that I regularly make. After that when I was searching for clinical research on tart cherry juice, it was an other surprise to see many of the benefits listed on the journal clinically proven.

Types Of Cherries:

Cherries are basically divided into two, one is the sweet variety and the other is the tart variety, the tart variety has more nutritional benefits than the sweet ones. There also many varieties of tart cherries and they are best used for baking and for making concentrates and jams. Tart cherries can be pale yellow fleshed or red fleshed but regardless they have wonderful health benefits. If planning to use the tart cherries as a remedy, I would suggest taking them in the form of juice, especially fresh juice has the most benefits.

Tart Cherry Juice Medicinal Uses:

1. Tart Cherry Juice For Arthritic Pain:

Tart cherry juice has been popularly believed to help in arthritis and the clinical research done on 58 men for 6 weeks has shown pain relief for people with mild to moderate knee pain.

But the interesting thing about this study is the effect was not significantly difference in the group that was taking the tart cherry juice concentrate than the placebo group which shows that our mind can also be a powerful tool in pain relief.

2. Tart Cherry Juice For Insomnia:

I found 2 studies regarding the use of tart cherry juice for sleep, one was done on older men and other was done using 20 people of all ages. The clinical research for insomnia was done on older patients for a period of 2 weeks.

There was modest increase in the sleep time in older adults who are suffering from insomnia. For the later group there was significant improvement in the quality of sleep. These studies show that tart cherry juice can be used for improving the quality of our sleep. It can be given to children too.

3. Tart cherry juice For Inflammation:

Inflammation caused during strenuous exercise and sports are usually treated with externally applying ice, plenty of rest and taking anti inflammatory drugs.

But natural juices like tart cherry juice has been proven to give same effect like anti inflammatory drugs but without any side effects! Taking tart cherry juice a week before and after the strenuous activity like long distance running will greatly minimize the joint and muscle pain.

4. Tart cherry Juice And Antioxidants:

Tart cherry juice is full of antioxidants and the best part is it has been proven to reduce the oxidative stress in older people which is the main reason for mortality and many of the diseases of the old age.

5. Tart Cherry Juice For Gout:

People suffering from gout, a disease characterized with high levels of uric acid will greatly benefits from tart cherry juice. Tart cherry juice has been found to reduce the uric levels in the body and greatly reduce the inflammation and pain. Tart cherry juice is also recommended for weight loss, constipation and for preventing kidney stones.

How To Make Tart Cherry Juice At Home?

If you have tart cherries at home, you can easily make fresh juice daily by blending the cherries with little water and honey or you can make a concentrate too. If you don’t have tart cherries at home, you can buy the tart cherry concentrate available in the shops. I have given the recipe for making tart cherry concentrate using fresh tart cherries, hope you will give it a try…

METHOD:
1. Pit the fresh cherries and take them in a pot.

2. Add water and boil till the cherries turn completely soft and mushy with the lid closed. Mash it up with a masher.

3. Add the sugar and boil till the sugar dissolves, I used raw sugar in this recipe.

4. Now strain the mixture to get a smooth liquid.

5. Boil till it turns into a thick syrup.

6. Once it turns syrupy, switch off and store in the refrigerator.

7. For making the tart cherry juice, add the desired amount of tart cherry concentrate to cold water and drink. For my juice, I added a tiny little bit of ginger juice while mixing, you can see the ginger juice has settled in the bottom of the glass.

NOTES:

Try using freshly plucked, ripe cherries for good flavor.
You can buy tart cherry concentrate from the shops too.
The concentrate tastes better than fresh juice 🙂
Adding ginger juice is optional and some might not prefer ginger juice in the recipe.
These cherries are very very tart so I have added equal amounts of sugar.

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