The Facts and the Fiction
In the 1990s, popular press about the healing wonders of Melatonin supplements exploded. In 1995 Newsweek had a cover article on the subject. Books were written regarding the extraordinary healing powers it had. The list of things that Melatonin has been claimed to cure is a long one. Besides helping you sleep, Melatonin has been claimed to improve sex-life, longevity. It has been claimed to prevent osteoporosis, breast cancer, and the effects of menopause, at as a contraceptive, and help fight ravages of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and AIDS.
In the aftermath of this melatonin craze, criticism of the hype around Melatonin has been vast. Upon looking closer at the research that has been conducted, one sees that many of the claims made about Melatonin are unsupported. Many of the claims of Melatonin are drawn from a study where 10 mice were given a small dose of Melatonin every night and 10 were not. The 10 mice that were given the Melatonin lived an average of 931 days and the other mice lived an average of 752 days. One can see how an experiment like this could promote ideas that Melatonin equals longevity. However, humans are very different from mice, and very little research has actually been conducted on human patients.
However, the fact that Melatonin supplements help humans to get a good night sleep is for the most part undisputed. Experiments have been done to test the ability of supplements of melatonin to affect human sleep, and the results have shown that it clearly does. Yet despite the fact that Melatonin is proven to help insomnia, jet lag and SAD, one should always talk to their doctor before taking the supplements. Doses of Melatonin sold in health stores can raise levels of the substance in the blood thirty times higher than normal, which could be dangerous. Also, if your body is being exposed to too much Melatonin, it may stop producing what it is able to so that it does not produce any more than your body can take. Furthermore, Melatonin is a very new product, and side affects are little known. Reports of the ill effects of Melatonin have occasionally come to the FDA, but unless studies clearly show that Melatonin is harmful, it will remain on the shelves for consumer use.
(abcnews.go.com/.../living/DailyNews/ blind_sleep001011.html)