You may have seen tart cherry juice tucked in among the coconut water and sports recovery drinks at your grocery store. But, if you haven't bought a bottle yet, now may be the time to get one. A growing body of research is showing that tart cherry juice can benefit your health in many ways.

Maybe you've overlooked tart cherry juice in the past. Or perhaps you were skeptical, thinking, "What does tart cherry juice taste like and what's it really good for?" Here are some compelling reasons it may be worth adding tart cherry juice to your cart.

What Does Tart Cherry Juice Taste Like?

Before diving into tart cherry juice benefits, you may wonder how tart cherry juice tastes. It's pretty tart, yes, but also sweet. It's somewhat reminiscent of drinking an unfiltered red wine, with a bold richness and some slight sediment at the bottom. But you drink it chilled, and the sweetness provides balance. Some even say it tastes like cherry pie.

Because of the tartness, you'll sometimes find extra sugar added to tart cherry juice, so keep an eye on labels. Your best bet for health is to seek out 100% tart cherry juice without added sugar to get the most health benefits (that's what they used in the studies).

4 Research-Backed Benefits of Tart Cherry Juice

One of the most experienced researchers on the topic of what tart cherries can do for you is Malachy McHugh, Ph.D., director of research at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

1. You May Sleep Better After Drinking Tart Cherry Juice

Does tart cherry juice help you sleep? That's the question professional athletes asked McHugh after they started drinking it. "The athletes were experiencing better sleep and were themselves attributing it to the tart cherry juice," says McHugh, a consultant for the New York Rangers NHL hockey team since 2000. That observation led to multiple studies showing a positive connection between regular use of tart cherry juice and longer, better sleep with less insomnia. Tart cherries are one of the few food sources that contain a significant amount of melatonin, and "the presumption was that the high levels of melatonin in tart cherries were a sleep aid," McHugh says.

While studies did show that tart cherries increased melatonin levels in humans, McHugh points out that tart cherries also have an anti-inflammatory effect, which could be another reason the crimson juice can help you catch some Zs. "The dose of melatonin in tart cherry juice is the primary reason it's helpful for sleep, but the magnesium content and anti-inflammatory properties are important too," says Karman Meyer, RDN, and author of Eat To Sleep: What To Eat & When To Eat It for a Good Night's Sleep . "That's the wonderful thing about nutrient-rich foods—there's an entourage effect, meaning the whole food is greater than the sum of its parts."

So how much tart cherry juice should you drink a day to get the benefits for sleep? In the sleep studies, improvements were seen from drinking the equivalent of two 8-ounce servings of 100% tart cherry juice daily. In one study, participants drank the juice in the morning and one to two hours before bed for two weeks. In another study, people consumed the juice daily for one week. "As with most 100% fruit juices, I recommend enjoying them at a meal or with a snack that contains fiber and protein to help stabilize blood glucose levels and keep you feeling satisfied," Meyer says.

And what about the natural sugar content in tart cherry juice? Could it be counterproductive to good sleep? Meyer and McHugh say no. "Drinking 100% tart cherry juice that contains only its natural sugars [as opposed to tart cherry juice with added sugars] should not be a cause of sleep issues," Meyer says.

2. If Your Joints Hurt, Tart Cherry Juice Can Provide Some Relief

More benefits of tart cherry juice: People suffering from joint pain, osteoarthritis, or gout may benefit. In fact, using tart cherry juice for gout and arthritis relief is a word-of-mouth remedy that dates back nearly a century, as many pain sufferers have cited feeling less acute pain after eating canned tart cherries or drinking tart cherry juice. This possible connection was first formally studied in 1950 when, after eating a can of tart or yellow cherries a day, 12 arthritis and gout sufferers had lower blood levels of uric acid.

"Increased uric acid in the blood is what has been found to lead to very painful episodes of a gout attack," says Toby Amidor, RD, and author of The Family Immunity Cookbook. A preliminary study found that eating about two cups of fresh pitted cherries after an overnight fast showed a 15% decrease in uric acid levels in healthy women. Other research has indicated similar reductions in markers of joint pain after participants drank 10.5 ounces of tart cherry juice twice daily for 21 days.

3. Tart Cherries Can Lower Your Blood Pressure

Doctors often use a blood test measuring C-reactive protein (or CRP) to determine a patient's risk of developing high blood pressure and other cardiovascular diseases. And an increase in CRP often comes along with a diagnosis of hypertension. Diet changes like limiting sodium and eating more high-fiber foods are often recommendations for people with high blood pressure, and "there are multiple studies showing reduced CRP with drinking tart cherry juice," McHugh says.

In one study, men with early hypertension who consumed two ounces of tart cherry juice concentrate reduced systolic blood pressure within three hours. In another study, men and women with moderately elevated blood pressure who drank two ounces of tart cherry juice concentrate also significantly reduced systolic blood pressure. In another study, men and women who drank 16 ounces of tart cherry juice daily for 12 weeks had significantly lower systolic blood pressure and LDL cholesterol than those who drank a placebo.

4. Tart Cherries Are an After-Exercise All-Star

When McHugh was first asked to study whether tart cherry juice affected exercise and muscle recovery, he was skeptical. "What most people do not realize is that it is very hard to prevent the soreness you get on the days after unfamiliar or intense exercise," he says.

"I called a colleague who had just finished a study showing that vitamin C supplementation had no effect on muscle damage. We decided to repeat that study with tart cherry juice. No one was more surprised by the results than I was," McHugh recalls. "The fact that taking a drink for four days before and after damaging exercise prevented strength loss was flabbergasting to me. [Prior to this] no interventions—including nutritional strategies, massage, ice baths, or even anti-inflammatory medications—had markedly affected strength recovery." Since that first study, much research on tart cherries has shown similar benefits.

So, what makes tart cherries so good for your post-exercise muscles? Tart cherries pack more than 30 phytonutrients with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. "It's probably the diversity of phytonutrients in cherries that sets it apart from other foods and fruits in terms of the beneficial recovery effects," McHugh says.

And what type of athletes may need tart cherry juice the most? McHugh says it could be anyone, from teenagers to professional athletes and every workout warrior in between—but it depends on your schedule. If you have a training schedule that rotates the muscle groups you're working and incorporates rest days, McHugh says, there's no need to use tart cherry juice or any other intervention to accelerate recovery.

McHugh says, "However, if one has to compete or perform before having fully recovered from the prior performance, then interventions to accelerate muscle recovery are needed. In many sports leagues, athletes need to play multiple games a week, involving high physical and physiological stress, plus a lot of travel with disrupted sleep. The seasons become a war of attrition with bodies breaking down slowly."

That's where a daily dose of a nutrient-dense drink like tart cherry juice could help. It could also be beneficial if you're facing an upcoming strenuous activity that is out of the norm. McHugh uses the example of a recreational skier. "You may go away for a week of skiing every winter only to struggle on the second and third days as the damage from the first day of skiing kicks in."

The Bottom Line on the Benefits of Tart Cherry Juice

After having studied the impact of tart cherries in many different ways, McHugh would recommend regularly drinking tart cherry juice because of accelerated recovery during a strenuous season or period of exercise.

He and Amidor also point out that the consistent factor across nearly all of these studies is the tart cherry juice benefit for combating inflammation. "Many of the [tart cherry] studies have to do with a reduction in inflammation," Amidor says. "The antioxidants found in tart cherries and tart cherry juice certainly can help decrease inflammation."

But for heart health in particular, Amidor says not to lean too heavily on any one thing. "The cumulative effect of eating a heart-healthy diet along with regular physical activity and weight loss (if necessary) is really what is needed to provide heart health benefits," she says. "Consuming tart cherry juice should be done, if desired, in addition to everything else."

How Much Cherry Juice Should You Drink?

As McHugh points out, we not only need to have strong evidence that tart cherry juice can help with arthritis, inflammation, pain relief, recovery, and sleep, but we to know how much makes a difference. "The key is that we know how many cherries you need to eat to have medicinal effects," he says. That amount is 16 ounces, or two 8-ounce bottles, of 100% fresh tart cherry juice a day, which is the equivalent of eating 100 tart cherries. "That dose has been used to good effect in multiple studies," McHugh says. He adds, "In practice if taking the drink habitually, one bottle [8 ounces a day] may suffice."

And what about eating, say a 1-cup serving of fresh or frozen tart cherries, or a ¼-cup serving of dried tart cherries, or taking a daily cherry extract supplement? While you would gain some anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and melatonin effects from any of these forms, McHugh says you wouldn't get enough to reach the efficacious dose used in these studies.

If the benefits of tart cherry juice intrigue you, the good news is that one or two 8-ounce servings a day isn't an outrageous amount. "Comparatively, people often talk about the health benefits of the antioxidant resveratrol in red wine," McHugh says, "but one would need to drink more than 100 bottles of red wine a day to get sufficient resveratrol to see medicinal effects." And there's not a health professional out there who would recommend that.