How to ensure sleep and relieve the fatigue caused by staying up late has become the appeal of young people today. Related industries have developed rapidly in recent years, and health products have appeared one after another, such as sleep aid products with melatonin as the main ingredient. So, is melatonin safe?
How does Melatonin Affect Sleep?
Melatonin is one of the hormones secreted by the pineal gland in the brain. It is also known as the pineal gland. Its secretion has an obvious circadian rhythm: the secretion in the dark environment at night is 5 to 10 times that of the daytime. It usually peaks around 2 am.
The well-known function of melatonin is to improve sleep quality. It can shorten the time to wake up before going to sleep and the time to fall asleep, enhance the quality of sleep, and significantly reduce the number of awakenings during sleep. Simply put, it helps people to fall asleep quickly, and it is not easy to cause a feeling of tiredness and sleepiness after getting up.
At the same time, as an endogenous substance, melatonin is not foreign to the body. It is not easy to cause the accumulation of drugs and their metabolites in the body. Moreover, it has a short metabolic cycle and can be reduced to normal physiological levels within a few hours of oral administration. It has less impact on the work life of ordinary people the next day.
Who Needs Melatonin?
Melatonin to improve sleep is not for everyone. Clinically, melatonin is only suitable for people who need to adjust their sleep rhythm when going abroad or on night shifts, as well as some elderly patients with insufficient melatonin secretion and difficulty in maintaining a regular sleep cycle in a short period of time.
However, most people with sleep disorders do not belong to the above groups, and poor sleep quality is not all the reasons mentioned above. Therefore, for people with sleep disorders who are not deficient in melatonin, the effect of additional melatonin supplementation is not ideal, but it is likely to cause various side effects, such as menstrual disorders, infertility, and decreased male libido. In addition, it is not recommended for people who need to drive, work with machinery during the day, or engage in dangerous operations.
Melatonin Dosage and Safety
Taking melatonin in small doses (1 to 3 mg) each time has an ideal hypnotic effect and is safe.
Considering your age, if you have menstrual disorders, vaginal dryness, heart palpitations, and easy fatigue, your insomnia may also be related to menopause. Therefore, if you have symptoms of insomnia, you should first go to the hospital to find out the specific cause, and then carry out targeted treatment and conditioning. Buying and taking melatonin products by yourself is not recommended.