Promotes sleep, counters jet lag, improves sex life, slows aging, etc. The other claims are unproven. No serious side effects have been reported, but long-term effects are unknown. Hormones are powerful substances and can produce unexpected results, so we don't recommend melatonin. But now that scientific research is catching up with melatonin mania, you may want to proceed with caution.
Production rises at night, falls by day, and affects our internal body clock and sleep cycles.
Melatonin has been assumed, logically enough, to have some use as a sleeping pill. Here are some questions, facts, and mysteries. The answer, until recently, was thought to be yes. But a new study at the Harvard Medical School of healthy people taking no medications or drugs found no differences in melatonin levels between the young and old. In earlier studies medications such as aspirin taken by older people may have suppressed melatonin levels.