DOES MELATONIN HELP PEOPLE SLEEP?
It Is A Misapplied But Probably Safe Miracle Drug (This editorial comments and expands on the preceding study.) In the USA, melatonin is a popular drug that has the legal status of a nutritional supplement, although that is legal fiction. As a result, it is not regulated as a medicine, and is advertised and sold widelyin pharmacies, health food shops and on the internet. Millions of people use it mostly because they believe it will help them sleep. Claims for melatonin products and their pharmaceutical quality are not controlled. Their safety has not been systematically studied. In the trials of secondary sleep disorder, melatonin had no significant effect on the time taken to fall asleep and caused a small but unimportant increase in the time in bed spent asleep (sleep efficiency). Shift work disorder differs in that the time zone and environments remain the same while people are subjected to new rhythms of sleep and wakefulness. These altered rhythms sometimes continue for long perio
