AC Vinegar and Honey Sleep Remedy: Does it Work?

Vinegar and honey? I agree, it sounds kind of gross together.

But maybe it’s because I’ve struggled with insomnia in the past, or maybe it’s because my dad was a health nut and I grew up using home remedies. But when I saw a recipe for a vinegar and honey sleep remedy, I wasn’t immediately grossed out.

My first thought oddly enough, was, “cool, I’ve got to try this!”

Before I tried it though, I wanted to know if an ACV and honey drink even had the potential to actually help me sleep. I already knew that honey is a sleep superfood, but did vinegar have any sleep promoting properties?

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Does Apple Cider Vinegar Make you Sleepy?

ACV is a cure all I think. Seriously, they say it can cure, help, or clean anything!

I’ve heard of vinegar helping you lose weight, clearing up dandruff and easing a sore throat. Heck, at the moment I’m using it as a fabric softener for my laundry. So to hear that vinegar might be good for sleep wasn’t exactly a shocker.

But if it works, just how does vinegar make you sleepy? Turns out, oh, so many ways. 🙂

Apple cider vinegar promotes sleep by:Bragg Organic Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar, Raw, 16 Ounce

Breaking down fatty acids and releasing tryptophan. Tryptophan is an amino acid that your body can’t produce itself. You can only get it from the foods you eat. Tryptophan makes you sleepy by producing seratonin, which in turn produces the sleep hormone, melatonin.
Stabilizing blood sugar. If you’ve ever suddenly woken up from a dead sleep, you’ve probably experienced a blood sugar dip. When your blood sugar suddenly dips, it causes a stress response in your brain and cortisol gets released. (Ugh, cortisol, that pesky wake up hormone!)
Promoting good Ph balance. If you’re constantly getting up to go to the bathroom at night, high acidic levels in your body could be to blame. Urination is your body’s way of trying to balance that acid out.
Being full of potassium, B complex vitamins, and has trace amounts of magnesium. Your body needs all of these vitamins and minerals to sleep properly. Potassium and B vitamins are a natural relaxant, and magnesium calms nerves and muscles. Insomnia is actually a symptom of magnesium deficiency.

How can Honey Help you Sleep Better?

Once I found out how good honey was for sleep, I couldn’t quit using it. I like it so well, I’ve used it as a main ingredient in most of my drink recipes that help sleep.

I like to call honey a sleep superfood because there’s so many ways it can promote good sleep, and when I started looking into how ACV can benefit sleep I learned how well honey and vinegar can work hand in hand.

Honey can have a powerful impact on your sleep quality. In looking at this list, you can see how its sleep benefits overlaps with vinegar.

Organic raw honey promotes sleep by:
Desert Creek Honey Raw Texas Honey, Unfiltered,1 lbs (454

Activating the release of melatonin, the sleep hormone, and starts the sleep process naturally. Without this melatonin release, your body stays in an awake state.
Slightly spiking insulin levels as soon as you take it, which allows tryptophan to enter your brain quicker and easier.
Fueling the liver to keep glycogen (glucose) levels on an even keel for at least 8 hours. Like vinegar, honey plays a key role in regulating blood sugar levels. Honey helps glucose levels stay balanced, and then glycogen is released steadily throughout the night, which means less wakefulness for you.
Providing a serious of relaxation and sleep promoting vitamins and minerals like B complex vitamins, potassium, calcium, magnesium.

Don’t Skimp. Use Quality AC Vinegar and Honey to Help Sleep

When I make any natural sleep remedy, I make sure I’m working with pure ingredients to get their full beneficial effect. I know vinegar and honey sound like staple pantry items, but it’s important to choose quality here.

Make sure to use pure apple cider vinegar that still has the “mother” inside. This “mother” is just the culture that turned the apple cider into vinegar, and it’s full of healthy cultures and bacteria. There’s probably a lot of ACV with a mother out there, but I always use Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar.

When it comes to honey, always use unpasteurized raw honey in anything you make! Most supermarket honeys have been pasteurized and its beneficial nutrients have been cooked off. Even scarier, some “honey” sold in stores isn’t really honey at all. It’s high fructose corn syrup. Yuck!

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This has got to be one of the easiest homemade sleep remedies I have ever made. Not counting the water, it only has two ingredients. It may not be tasty, but it definitely has simplicity going for it! Here it is:

8 oz warm water
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp honey (more is okay if you’re grossed out by the vinegar taste!)

Heat 8 ounces of water in a pot. Remove from heat and add 2 tbsp AC vinegar and 1 tbsp raw honey. Mix well, and drink about a half hour before you go to bed.

If the thought of drinking a whole cup of warm honey flavored vinegar water doesn’t sound appealing to you, you could just mix the honey and vinegar together and drink that.

Another option is Bragg’s honey vinegar blend. You can drink a couple of ounces on its own or you can blend it in a glass of water.

How Did it Taste?

Totally honest? I’ve tried some nasty and weird sleep remedies in my time, but this wasn’t all that bad. I mean, not as horrible as I’d imagined. It’s not going to be one of my favorite drinks that help sleep, but it’s definitely one I can put into rotation.

But did it work?

Kind of. It didn’t make me feel super drowsy like nutmeg does, but it didn’t take me long to fall asleep and I stayed asleep all night. Maybe it was just a fluke, I don’t know.

Oftentimes when we take natural sleep remedies, we get aggravated that it didn’t work, when in reality we weren’t taking it the right way. It’s important to make sure you take the proper steps to give any sleep remedy every chance to work.

Of course, any natural sleep remedy is only as good as your sleep hygiene. If you have bad sleep habits, all the natural sleep aids and remedies in the world won’t help you sleep at night. So make sure you’re doing things like not watching TV or scrolling on your phone an hour before bed.

I keep track of what natural remedy I’m trying at the moment, if it helped me sleep, as well as my sleep habits in my daily sleep journal workbook.

Are you Going to a Try Vinegar and Honey Sleep Tonic?

In my many years of struggling with sleep, I’ve learned that it never hurts to try something new. And while I don’t have chronic insomnia anymore, I do still have nights here and there where I can’t sleep. On nights like that I like to take something to help settle me to sleep.

I rotate natural sleep remedies so my body doesn’t get used to any one thing, so I’ll be sticking this vinegar and honey sleep tonic in my “sleep arsenal.”

How about you, are you going to try vinegar and honey for sleep? I’d love to hear your experiences with this tonic. Leave some comments below and let me know! 🙂