Consult your doctor
Last year, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a leading supplement industry, published voluntary guidelines for its members. Among them: place products in deterrent packaging of children; Tell people to consult a pediatrician before using melatonin; And warn caregivers that melatonin “is only for incidental and/or intermittent use.”
Many manufacturers are not part of CRN, and it is not difficult to find suppliers who are not in accordance with those recommendations. And whether parents follow the recommendations is something completely different. User reviews and academic surveys indicate that some parents regularly dose for months or years, and the products themselves seem packaged for long -term use: for example, the Maryruth company sells bottles of melatonin gummies for children with a “2 -month offer”. Natrol, a popular brand that warns healthcare providers that the product is “only for short -term use”, sells bottles with 140 doses. (Maryruth's did not respond to requests for commenting and a spokesperson for Natrol refused to comment.)
In the meantime, while the sale of melatonin a growing number of evidence indicates cases of abuse.
One problem: children sometimes seem to find and swallow, gummies and other melatonin products. Calls to poison control centers for pediatric melatonin intake increased by 530 percent between 2012 and 2021, according to an analysis published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Usually nothing happened: in small children, the vast majority of incidents were solved without the child experienced symptoms at all. When the symptoms seem, they are usually mild – for example dressiness or gastrointestinal upset. (Achieving a deadly dose of melatonin seems to be virtually impossible, said Laura Labay, a forensic toxicologist at NMS Labs, who offers toxicological test services.)
Yet some experts have expressed concern that melatonin abuse could contribute to more serious results in rare cases.
In 2015, Sandra Bishop-Freeman, now the most important toxicologist at the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, was called to assess about a tragic matter. A 3 -month -old girl died in her cradle. More than 20 bottles of melatonin were found in the house and an investigation showed that the girl and her twin sister had received 5 milligrams of doses of melatonin several times a day to help them sleep. The blood levels of melatonin of the child were orders of size over the natural reach.
