Case study: Melatonin

gwern

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

Here's the longest-term study I could find: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19486273

Basically, children taking melatonin for several years didn't develop any problems. Melatonin is also used by blind people quite a bit, since without it their circadian rhythms are longer than 24 hours.

I believe it's not generally considered valid to apply results from medical studies on adults to children. I'm not sure if the reverse applies.

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Case study: Melatonin

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Case study: Melatonin

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