Melatonin Side Effects: What You Need to Know

Hi RB,

I recently replied to this study on another forum, and here is what I had to say :

To start, you have to consider the population they are dealing with, insomniacs.

People with insomnia are already at significantly increased risk for heart failure regardless of age, sex or weight differences and the risk increases with the number of insomnia symptoms. The dose of melatonin used for the purpose of sleep is likely too low and too short lived in the body to provide the heart protective effects that studies have already suggested that melatonin may offer.

If a person is taking melatonin for insomnia, the problem is likely already significant suggesting that they are already and have probably been having insomnia symptoms for sometime. There is a reason why they said this statement :

' The association between melatonin and increased risk of heart failure or death found in this study, which cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship, raises safety concerns about the use of melatonin, which is widely available, and may warrant more research on melatonin to assess its cardiovascular safety, researchers said. ' The underlined part of this statement pretty much says it all regarding this research, it didn't prove anything!

They can't prove cause and effect for the simple reason that the underlying disease, INSOMNIA, already significantly increases the risk of heart failure and many other health issues.

Now let's look at another statement from article :

' A review of 5 years of health records for more than 130, 000 adults with insomnia who had used melatonin for at least a year found they were more likely to be diagnosed with heart failure, require hospitalization for the condition or die from any cause. '

If you take out the words, " used melatonin " and replace them with the word "insomnia" The statement is not only true , but is already scientifically proven, but this article seems to leave that hugely important detail out of these highlights!

This seems like saying that ambulances are almost always at serious auto collision sites, so does that mean they are the cause of the accident?

This research was not peer reviewed and imo, it may not make it through that process with success.

Another point they mentioned is that the patients reviewed in their research had to have taken melatonin long term, as in one year or more of melatonin intake in order to be accepted into the study and were compared to people with insomnia who didn't show in their records that they were taking melatonin or any medications for insomnia. They also excluded people from the study who already had heart failure.

First, if you have insomnia and you are not taking a prescription sleep medication or melatonin, that suggests your insomnia may not be that bad or advanced.

Second, if you are not taking a prescription sleep medication, but you are taking melatonin, that might suggest that your insomnia is worse than those who are essentially taking nothing for their insomnia. The worse the insomnia the greater the chance for heart failure. I didn't see any mention of how long the non melatonin group had had insomnia, but that would be a very highly relevant point as the longer you have had insomnia the greater the risk for heart failure and many other health issues. In order to be in the melatonin group, you had have been taking melatonin for at least a year or more, suggesting that the melatonin group had had insomnia for at least a year or longer. There is no indication of length of time with insomnia for the non melatonin group. It seems realistic to think that a person who has had insomnia for three months might fair better than a person who has had insomnia for at least a year and the science confirms this because the longer you have had insomnia the greater your chance for heart failure.

Had they allowed people to be included who were using prescription medications for insomnia, I think the title for the article would have looked much different.

Lastly, there are no other melatonin studies that I have ever seen to support the idea that longer term use of melatonin causes or contributes to heart failure, but there are real studies to suggest that melatonin may have heart protective effects such as this :

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9251346/

Here is a relevant quote from the link :

' Numerous studies have shown that melatonin has significant functions in cardiovascular disease, and may have anti-aging properties. The ability of melatonin to decrease primary hypertension needs to be more extensively evaluated. Melatonin has shown significant benefits in reducing cardiac pathology, and preventing the death of cardiac muscle in response to ischemia-reperfusion in rodent species. Moreover, melatonin may also prevent the hypertrophy of the heart muscle under some circumstances, which in turn would lessen the development of heart failure. Several currently used conventional drugs show cardiotoxicity as an adverse effect. Recent rodent studies have shown that melatonin acts as an anti-oxidant and is effective in suppressing heart damage mediated by pharmacologic drugs. Therefore, melatonin has been shown to have cardioprotective activity in multiple animal and human studies. Herein, we summarize the most established benefits of melatonin in the cardiovascular system with a focus on the molecular mechanisms of action.

Trying to pass this off as relevant research, gives good researchers a bad name.

I won't say that this was a hit piece on melatonin, because I understand that some researchers will do research just to get paid, but in my opinion, this research was a terrible waste of research dollars that could have been used for a much better purpose.

Art

Hi Sunshiney,

Some people have a hard time taking oral melatonin and for those, it is more effective to get your extra melatonin through multiple natural means. I wrote an article explaining about this here :

https://www.earthclinic.com/supplements/how-to-increase-melatonin-naturally.html

There are many foods that contain melatonin and previously I thought that the amounts available through these foods was too small to have any benefit, but newer studies are suggesting that even these small amounts can be very beneficial. Here is a link to the most comprehensive list of foods that contain melatonin as well as how much melatonin they contain that I have been able to find to date. Once you go to the link, you will have to scroll down to Table 1 :

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5409706/

Another potential option is to test melatonin lotion (ML) or melatonin gel (MG) as I have not had any feedback on these two causing vivid dreams. Here are two links that describe how to make each one :

ML :

https://www.earthclinic.com/supplements/melatonin-lotion.html

MG:

https://www.earthclinic.com/supplements/melatonin-gel.html

Art

Hi Bindi,

If 1.5 mg of melatonin caused you that much distress, then all forms of supplemental melatonin should be off your list of supplements! All is not lost though. Instead, you can get your melatonin from the earlier morning and later afternoon sun exposure, foods rich in melatonin and red light therapy. These natural forms of melatonin seem to avoid any potential side effects of melatonin and the sun can improve your circadian rhythms also.

I wrote an article awhile back that describes a few natural ways to get melatonin here :

https://www.earthclinic.com/supplements/how-to-increase-melatonin-naturally.html

Art

Hi Kenny,

Yes, there are people who can not tolerate melatonin as I have mentioned many times on EC, but the majority of people do tolerate melatonin as shown in many studies. Generally, as soon as you realize that there is a negative reaction to melatonin or you are not tolerating melatonin because of symptoms such as you described, it is probably a very good idea to stop using melatonin immediately rather than continuing. It is sort of like your body is trying to let you know that this is not compatible with you.

Art

Hi HisJewel,

Thank you for the feedback on melatonin!

What I have noticed is that some people can develop diarrhea from HDM [High Dose Melatonin], but in the few people I have seen or heard of this side effect, that delay, can vary from 3 days to 3 weeks. In either case, the delay makes it possible to use melatonin long enough to help achieve the desired result with Covid-19 and it may be possible to use melatonin for a very brief period even if diarrhea does occur in an attempt to have maximal effect on Covid-19. Stoppage of HDM seems to allow a fairly quick recovery from the diarrhea. I still feel that the combination of melatonin plus the addition of the Xlear Nasal Spray, suggest the potential for a quick recovery.

Here is a link to what I wrote about Xlear Nasal Spray and Covid-19 : Https://www.earthclinic.com/xlear-for-covid-recovery.html

Art

I definitely feel your pain. I had insomnia for years. Turned out it was gluten. (Yeah, I thought I'd tried eliminating it, but I guess I hadn't. If I get even a pinch of flour, ping, eyes wide open all night long.) Melatonin makes me loopy as well unless I take a tiny tiny dose. Also, if I do high intensity workouts sometimes that makes it worse, especially if I'm fasted.

GOOD LUCK and SWEET DREAMS.

Hi Manti,

I use to take melatonin, but stopped because of two side effects. One side effect was that it acted as a diuretic, so I really didn't get much sleep b/c of running to the bathroom. The other was very real dreams. It got to the point that I could not figure out if I had really had conversations with people in my dreams versus reality. Melatonin is actually a hallucinagen your body naturally produces. I guess when you add more of the chemical to your body, it coases you to dream more realistically.