The Great (and Risky) Melatonin Experiment on Children
Supplement use soars amid worries over long-term side effects on developing brains and bodies. Here’s what pediatricians and sleep experts advise.
Sometimes we parents will do almost anything to get our kids to sleep. The solution du jour is the supplement melatonin, whose potential long-term effects on developing child brains and bodies is unknown. American parents are conducting a huge, uncontrolled experiment on our children, loading them up with a hormone in tasty chewables and gummies of questionable quality and usefulness instead of addressing the underlying health, lifestyle and behavioral challenges that contribute to the genuine problem of inadequate sleep.
The fundamental problem is clear: More than one-third of children 14 and younger don’t get enough sleep, and for high-schoolers the figure is 78%.
The consequences are serious: Insufficient sleep causes daytime tiredness, reduces concentration and productivity, and packs numerous well-established long-term health risks, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Lack of sleep among children ages 6 to 12 — less than 9 hours a night — creates lasting deficiencies in areas of the brain that deal with memory, intelligence and overall well-being.
