Top it off with a cherry or two — or 10. Don't worry, they're healthy. But not the sugary sweet cherries often shot through with additional bright pink color. Not the ones that sit atop an ice cream sundae or are dropped into an alcoholic beverage.

We're talking about cherries with a natural bright red color and tart sweet flavor — the cherries that often go into a cherry pie. When the pie is made from Montmorency tart cherries (often referred to as sour cherries), the pie has a distinctive sour sweet flavor.

That tart flavor is becoming more and more popular in juice form, a new kind of adult beverage that has attributes to improve health. The cherries get that tart sour flavor — and their bright red color — from a high level of flavonoids called anthocyanins. Along with the distinctive flavor and color, anthocyanin can provide health benefits as a dietary antioxidant.

Reducing muscle soreness after exercise, easing of arthritis pain and the enhancement of heart health are among the health benefits that are reported by Choosecherries, an organization providing information and promoting the consumption of Montmorency cherries.

More recently, Montmorency cherries have been reported to help promote more restful sleep cycles. Wilfred Pidgeon, Ph.D. of the Sleep and Neurophysiology Research Laboratory at the University Rochester Medical Center, found that those who consumed a blend of tart cherry juice had reductions of insomnia severity. However, the study did not find the improvement to be better than traditional medication or cognitive behavioral therapies.

In another study undertaken by Glyn Howatson while performing research in the School of Life Sciences at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, researchers found that the consumption of tart cherry juice resulted in an increase in exogenous melatonin.

Ann G. Liu, Ph.D., along with colleagues from Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the School of Medicine at Louisiana State University Health Science Center, reported an increase of up to 90 minutes of quality sleep in a study using tart cherry juice. The cherry juice facilitated the availability of tryptophan the precursor to serotonin that aids sleep.

Michigan grows close to three quarters of the tart cherries consumed in the United States. One of the largest farms is Cherry Bay Orchards, and the farm averages 10 to 15 million pounds of tart cherries a year. That's a lot of juice.

So the next time you're having trouble falling asleep, try eating a few cherries or drinking some cherry juice instead of counting sheep.