This green vegetable might be best known for making wee smell a bit like Sugar Puffs, but there is more to this humble stalk-shaped legume than just bathroom-scent results. Asparagus has many beneficial properties, including being packed with minerals and essential vitamins, as well as being a low-calorie addition to any dinner plate.
The stem vegetable, which comes into season between April and June in the UK, is also reputed to have other properties, including helping to tell the future. Jemima Packington, a practising asparamancer from Worcestershire, told the BBC in February that 2026 would see political “carnage” and a “tremendous World Cup”, and aguably both predictions appear quite accurate.
But there is another property which might interest those finding it hard to switch off from all the excitement this year, and that is that asparagus can help with getting to sleep and help improve memory.
According to the Mail Online, a growing body of research found that people who took asparagus supplements enjoyed better sleep and had less anxiety and sharper attention.
The vegetable was also crucially found to help with rebuilding muscle and tissue during sleep, as well as helping the body clear out waste cells from the brain, which can be associated with the onset of dementia.
A new review published by Cambridge University Press identified 18 studies involving 503 participants examining the impact of asparagus supplements.
The review reported: “Cognitive improvements were observed in reaction time, accuracy and mental fatigue, while mood and stress-related outcomes showed reductions in anxiety and depressive symptoms.
“Sleep outcomes consistently demonstrated improvements in sleep quality and duration, while biomarker data showed effects on cortisol levels.”
It also found evidence that for patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) “improvements were found in measures reflecting behavioural disturbances associated with dementia, e.g. hallucinations and agitation”.
The review suggested the advanced severity of the any dementia may affect how beneficial asparagus supplements can be.
In conclusion the review found “asparagus-based supplementation appears to provide modest benefits across multiple domains, including cognition (reaction time, attention and fatigue), mood (anxiety, depression and reduced agitation) and stress-related physiology (reduced cortisol), and particularly quality and duration of sleep.”
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
