Melatonin use in children is at an all-time high, and so are accidental overdoses of the supplement. Juno DeMelo explores why parents continue to give children the gummies even as pediatricians warn that doing so may be unsafe.
It was bedtime at the campsite we were sharing with four families when the kids formed a conga line, one hand clutching a s’more, the other on the tiny shoulder of the person in front of them. The other families had camped together before; ours hadn’t. “Gummy, gummy, gummy!” the kids began to chant. Apparently, it was, when the sun doesn’t set until nearly 9 p.m. Plus melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that the brain produces to regulate the sleep-wake cycle.
There is an approved medical usage for melatonin, and it’s to treat something called delayed sleep-phase syndrome. Children with this syndrome, for largely unknown reasons, fall asleep two or more hours later than a typical bedtime. In that situation, a sleep-medicine specialist might recommend giving .5 milligrams of melatonin four-to-five hours prior to bedtime, saysin New York. But Scripps says parents rarely follow that advice. Instead, she says, “They give them a gummy right before bed.
Brooke, who works in financial communications and lives in Easton, Connecticut, started giving her now-15-year-old son melatonin when he was 5. “His pediatrician neither supports nor dissuades him from taking it,” she says. “He still takes a very low dose, so I often wonder if it’s almost a placebo effect. But he claims he’s unable to sleep without it.”
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