A good night’s sleep is essential for good physical health, cognitive performance, and emotional func-tioning. Numerous sleep studies have documented these facts over time.
More and more adults are taking over-the-counter (OTC) melatonin prepara-tions to get a better night’s rest, but some of them may be taking this substance at dangerously high levels, a new study finds.
Experts worry that the coronavirus pandemic’s negative effect on sleep has further increased the reliance on melatonin and other sleeping aids. In the recent study, researchers obtained data from ten cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)Trusted Source, covering the years 1999 through 2018. This study included 55,021 adults, 52% of whom were women. The participants had a mean age of 47.5 years.
The results showed that in 2018, adults in the United States took more than twice the amount of this sleep aid than they did a decade earlier, which may pose a health risk in some individuals.
The study revealed that melatonin use increased from 0.4% in 1999–2000 to 2.1% in 2017–2018, with the increase beginning in 2009–2010.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)Trusted Source, and the lead author is Dr. Jingen Li, Ph.D., of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.
The study evaluated adults who took melatonin at the recommended dosage of 5 milligrams per day (mg/d), as well as those who exceeded that dosage. Before 2005–2006, the authors found that users did not report taking more than 5 mg/d, but the prevalence of taking more than 5 mg/d went from 0.08% in 2005–2006 to 0.28% in 2017–2018.
Although the overall use of melatonin in the U.S. is still relatively low, the study does “document a sig-nificant many-fold increase in melatonin use in the past few years,” according to sleep specialist Rebecca Robbins, Ph.D., who is an instructor in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School and was not involved in this study.
“Taking sleep aids has been linked to prospective studies with the development of dementia and early mortalityTrusted Source.
Melatonin is one such sleep aid.” The body’s biological clock regulates hormonal fluctuations, which evolve over a person’s lifespan.
As a result, aging often affects activities such as sleep and wake patterns, which, in some cases, become increasingly disrupted and fragmented. Melatonin is a key hormone that governs the body’s circadian rhythms.
