It is the only hormone in the United States available in stores and pharmacies without a prescription and melatonin enjoys quite a large popularity with the public. It is advertised and presented as a safe diet supplement, in the same category as most vitamins and minerals, with effective properties in relation to regulating sleep problems. However, as with most magical cures, it takes reasonable application and dosage to achieve desirable results, which – by the way – have not shown beyond reasonable doubt in research. The good reputation of melatonin rests, in this case, on a relatively fragile combination of positive customer feedback, clever advertising, diet supplementation fashion and fragmentary evidence that indicates that its synthetic, extraneous form does indeed work.

It is easy to argue that it is the same with many other medications and solutions. You do not wait until their release and marketing until every single reservation is dispelled and every possible undesirable effects examined. There is an elusive line that producers and distributors need to cross to start marketing their products related to their overall safety, effectiveness and usefulness. It is going to be a distant analogy, but if you look at the market of electronics (which is nonetheless not directly related to our health and life) you can see that manufacturers launch largely imperfect gadgets and learn from user experience before bringing in updated models. A similar learning process is taking place with melatonin and other supplements.

In fact, with diet supplements the problem is that every patient reacts differently to such substances and there is quite an essential issue of compliance with manufacturer guidelines. You certainly cannot expect magical results by simply popping pills with no regard for limitations or recommendations.

It is particularly noticeable with melatonin that needs to be taken at the right time, possibly even with in right kind of external environment, to induce or lengthen sleep. Natural melatonin, which is produced in the brain’s pineal body, is activated by the onset of darkness and serves as a powerful signal to our bodies that we should be getting ready to sleep. In consequence, taking hormonal capsules at dawn are nonsense and leads to a feeling of drowsiness, reduced vitality and reaction time. What we are doing is we are sending our bodies the wrong signal, unless of course we have just come back from a night shift and go to bed. For this scenario to work fine, we would need both a pill and darkened room, though, to keep things consistent.

There is reasonable evidence, from research and observations, that synthetic melatonin, when aptly administered, might be effective in sleep conditions related to shift work and jet lag. There is less conclusive material to support its use, especially long-term, for more complex disorders, including insomnia, even though it would not be very hard to find individual testimony extolling its benefits in particular cases. We still have to wait for more scientific data to emerge from systematic investigation of the problem.