NEXT time you jet off somewhere exotic, leave those “anti-jetlag” melatonin pills at home. They’re useless, concludes a review of melatonin research papers.
Nina Buscemi and colleagues at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, reviewed 15 major papers on the hormone, which is thought to alter sleeping patterns by changing the body’s circadian rhythms.
Pooling the results, the team found no evidence that the hormone helps people get to sleep sooner, whatever the cause of their sleeplessness. At best, it added 10 extra minutes of sleep for every 8 hours in bed (British Medical Journal, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.38731532766.F6).
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Other melatonin researchers say it does work. “Don’t knock it,” says Jo Arendt, of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre in Guildford, UK. She says that some studies are negative because subjects were not instructed to take melatonin at the correct time.
Buscemi’s team didn’t look at whether the hormone helps travellers and shift workers stay awake, which is supported by at least two studies not included in the analysis. The analysis concludes that melatonin is safe, although it didn’t evaluate the effects of taking the hormone regularly for more than three months.
