You may have heard about melatonin. This naturally occurring hormone is credited with everything from keeping your internal clock on track and helping you catch some ZZZs to reducing jet lag and easing anxiety about surgery.
Your body already makes melatonin, but sometimes, it doesn’t make enough of it. “Melatonin is secreted in darkness,” says Jennifer Martin, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles and a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Board of Directors. “When we’re exposed to light, it turns off melatonin production.”
Your melatonin levels aren’t static over the course of your life they change as you age. “In young people, there’s no melatonin production during the day and levels are very high at night, so it s almost like an on-off switch,” Martin says. “As people age, there s more of a gradual increase and a gradual decline, and the peak levels of melatonin aren t quite so high.”
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American consumers spent $825,559,397 on melatonin supplements in 2020, representing a 42.6% year-over-year increase, according to Nielsen.
Industry analysts expect the melatonin market to continue to grow, but a lack of federal oversight of supplements and sparse research into melatonin s long-term effects may harm consumers.
As more sellers look to cash in on the melatonin hype, doctors ask Americans to use caution when shopping.
Alex Goris has been taking melatonin every night for the last six months.
Goris, a 22-year-old lab technician in Salt Lake City, said his stress over getting exposed to coronavirus at work was keeping him from getting enough sleep before his 4:30 a.m. shifts. Melatonin has helped ease his late-night anxiety.