Michael Schulson
Appearances
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
It's part of the way that the body regulates its sleep cycles and gets you toward bedtime.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
So when people take synthetic melatonin in the form of a pill or a gummy... It also can have that experience of helping people feel a little bit more tired, a little bit sleepy, in ways that a lot of people find helpful for getting to sleep.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
I think it's really important to understand that when families are seeking to help their children get a better night's sleep, it's not just like an abstract health goal that they're trying to solve. They're often really speaking into very real challenges and very real problems that are affecting all parts of a family and are also really affecting their kids flourishing.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
So you really start to see an uptick in people taking melatonin in the 1990s. And there's this funny way in which you both have a lot of marketing and interest in it and research sort of coming and saying it. And at the same time, you have this moment when supplements...
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
are being deregulated in the United States, meaning Congress has gotten together and said, we're going to put a lot fewer restrictions on supplements and make it easier to sell things and make claims. You know, you could find these articles where people are like, whoa, melatonin is the new hot thing. What do we make of it? And there's anxiety around that. And there's excitement around that.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
So a lot of the early news coverage or advertisements have something that says it's not for children. And then starting in the 2000s, that the age floor begins to drop in this really interesting way. By the late 2000s, you start to see some news reports of parents using it.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
You start to see articles that are saying, well, maybe for kids older than 10, this makes sense, but not for really small kids. And over time, that just kind of gets gradually lower and lower and lower. And even then, it's especially in the last few years that it seems to be that clinicians are reporting a real uptick in use.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
I would say it's being marketed to parents in a very deliberate way. Yes. And it's the bottles. It's a lot of the language around saying melatonin is safe and drug free and non-habit forming. Right. These are all terms that you hear coming up again and again in this marketing.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
So melatonin falls into this really weird in-between space, right, where I think it's regulated as a supplement. And a lot of people think about it as being harmless and natural. And it's also something that's a prescription drug in a lot of the world, right, and is very much a drug. a drug. Legally, it is classed as a supplement. And so it's legal to say that it's not a drug.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
But I think that that can create this weird thing where people think about it as being maybe a little different than what how researchers and physicians describe it, which is they're like, it's a hormone. It's a hormone you take in order to change something in your sort of create a change in your body.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Sure. So as you just said, one thing they always say is, there's not enough, which people say in almost every field it feels like.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
We'd love to know more. But I think that this really is an area where, and this is something I heard again and again in interviews, where there is a sense that there is very little research, especially on long-term effects of melatonin. There's kind of two ways to break down melatonin. what the science says, right? What does the science say about whether it works?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
And then what does the science say about whether it's safe? And in both cases, there's some uncertainty. In terms of what the science says about whether it works, the evidence that exists definitely suggests that, yes, it can help kids fall asleep a little bit earlier. Maybe not dramatically earlier, but something kind of on the order of around 20 minutes, maybe a little bit more on average.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
And of course, that tracks with a lot of anecdotal evidence from parents who say, it works, it helps, um... There's also a question of whether children are actually better rested the next day. Again, there's actually some limited evidence. There's not really that much evidence either way showing that children are actually better rested when they have taken melatonin versus they have not.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
This is, again, like such a big question to unpack, right? But there are reasons to say, okay, it's fairly safe. I want to be careful not to generalize that. But one of the big questions is about short-term and long-term side effects. Okay. In terms of short-term side effects, they could definitely be there. The ones that are typically recorded in the scientific research tend to be pretty mild.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
But some researchers feel like that research hasn't been that comprehensive or rigorous and that it's possible that there are kind of immediate or short-term side effects that people just haven't really done a good job of tracking. And then in terms of the long-term effects, right?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
right, of children who are taking melatonin maybe four or five or six or seven times a week for years on end, that's a really big open question. And I think some scientists look at that evidence and say, we see that it's helpful for families. We don't see obvious signs of concern. And again, it can be really helpful for people and it's worth doing.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
It's worth, you know, in many cases, it's still worthwhile, right? And then I think there are a lot of researchers who look at this and say, based on that unknown, we should be cautious. And the way that it's being used right now is many things, but it's not cautious. And that's a problem.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Yeah, so I think we should kind of divvy this up for children in different situations, right?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
So I think for children with some neurodevelopmental differences that can significantly affect their ability to sleep, autism in particular, certain manifestations of ADHD, I think there has been more of a willingness to say, look, these are children who are having, in some cases, a tremendous difficulty falling asleep. Not sleeping or not sleeping well can be...
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
can have some really negative long-term effects. And it makes sense to perhaps use melatonin regularly in order to do that, in order to be helpful.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
It might be beneficial. I think that the way that melatonin is used often right now, which is... used regularly, often for neurotypical children who are perhaps sometimes taking the hormone a few times a week or every night with very little sort of supervision or input from a medical professional is something that very few people intend.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
And even the supplement makers themselves will often include language to that effect on their bottles. But there's a real disjunct between kind of where that consensus is and how I think a lot of people are actually using melatonin.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Yeah. And I want to be really clear that I am not telling families, like, don't use melatonin or this is definitely dangerous. And I really don't want to be in any way – delivering that message. I think that parents have the right to know what debates among scientists look like and understand where there's uncertainty. I also think that as parents, we're always having to weigh trade-offs.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
It's like so many parents dream, which is like, is this the answer? Is there this one gummy or this one thing that can help me get through this part of the day that can be really, really hard for parents and families?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
This is just a huge part of parenting. Lack of sleep is itself something that can be really hard on families, and this makes sense. I don't want to suggest that this is a clear-cut Like, parents, stop using melatonin. I think a lot of sleep experts, you know, perhaps predictably would say, talk to a sleep expert.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
And I think that one thing that they point out is that establishing good bedtime routines, doing things like avoiding screen time before bed, steps like that can be helpful. And I want to say, you know, I'm a parent who has implemented some of these behavioral interventions and still deals with totally chaotic bedtimes with one of my children.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
And so I don't want, I recognize that this doesn't always work or it doesn't always feel like it's going to work or it doesn't always sound realistic.