Melatonin use for sleep rises despite potential health risks
A recent study from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that melatonin use for sleep is rising among adults in the U.S., despite potential negative effects.
Melatonin is a natural hormone that the brain produces in response to darkness that regulates the body’s sleep-wake cycles. It is typically available as an over-the-counter supplement advertised to help with sleep disorders.
According to the American Psychological Association, researchers have seen that adults have recently had more difficulty sleeping and increased prominence of sleeping disorders, due to stressors such as work, lifestyle changes and illness, which are only amplified by the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Neomi Shah, a sleep specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital, said that she has seen increased patients coming in for sleep-related treatment, especially insomnia.
“About 95 percent of the time, patients who report having insomnia have tried melatonin over-the-counter at some point,” Shah said.
Many adults use more than the recommended amount of 0.5 milligrams to 3 milligrams of melatonin to try and solve long-term sleep issues such as insomnia.
Data from the JAMA study showed that by 2018, American adults across all demographic groups were taking more than twice the amount of melatonin that they took in 1999.
Even when using a normal serving of melatonin, people can also experience a variety of detrimental side effects, according to an article by the Mayo Clinic.
Melatonin use has been commonly connected to headaches, dizziness, nausea and drowsiness. Other side effects include depression, mild anxiety, disorientation and more. Especially with long-term use and higher dosages, the overall safety of melatonin and other side effects are not as well known.
Dr. Rebecca Robbins, an instructor in the sleep medicine department at Harvard Medical School, said not only has melatonin use been linked to side effects, but sleep aids may also be associated with the development of dementia and early mortality.
Overusing melatonin is dangerous because melatonin is not fully regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so companies are not required to test melatonin pills to ensure they actually contain the advertised amount of melatonin.
This means that pills may contain much higher amounts of melatonin than what is advertised on the label.
According to a study from the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, melatonin content in supplements ranged between -83 percent to +478 percent of what the label advertised.
Furthermore, 26 percent of the pills contained a contaminant called serotonin, a hormone used to treat neurological disorders that can have harmful effects at low levels.
In addition to its negative side effects and potentially inaccurate labels, Shah said in a majority of her patients needing sleep-related treatment, trying over-the-counter melatonin has not been effective.
According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, there is not enough evidence to show the effectiveness of melatonin use for chronic insomnia, according to guidelines by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American College of Physicians.
Instead, melatonin should be used with doctor guidance for short-term conditions, such as jet lag and delayed sleep-wake phase disorder.
“There is a view that if it’s natural, then it can’t hurt,” Robbins said. “The truth is, we just really don’t know the implications of melatonin in the longer term, for adults or kids.”