| Melatonin May Improve Slumber
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2006-05-05
FRIDAY, May 5
(HealthDay News) -- Taking melatonin during non-typical sleep times
significantly improves a person's ability to doze off, a new U.S.
study finds.
The finding
could be important for jet-lagged travelers, rotating or night-shift
workers, and people with delayed sleep phase syndrome.
Melatonin --
naturally produced by the body in darkness -- helps the brain
determine night and day in order to regulate sleep cycles and
circadian timing. While millions of Americans take melatonin
supplements to help them sleep better, research findings on the
effectiveness of these supplements have been mixed.
In this study,
researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical
School observed 21 men and 15 women, aged 18 to 30, with no
significant history of medical, sleep or psychological disorders. The
participants refrained from alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, illicit
substances, and prescription and non-prescription drugs for three
weeks before the start of the study.
For the first
three days and nights, the volunteers were studied in the sleep lab
to measure their normal sleep patterns and melatonin production.
"Participants
were then kept on a 20-hour sleep-wake schedule, simulating a
traveler crossing four time zones eastward every day," senior
author Dr. Charles Czeisler, chief of the division of sleep medicine
at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said in a prepared statement. "For
the next three weeks, 30 minutes before each sleep episode,
participants ingested either a placebo, 0.3 milligrams (mg), or 5.0
mg of pharmaceutical grade melatonin."
Reporting in the
May 1 issue of Sleep, the team found that "sleep
efficiency" when the body was not producing melatonin was 83
percent in the group taking the 5-milligram dose of melatonin, 84
percent among those taking the 0.3-milligram dose of melatonin, and
77 percent among those taking the placebo.
There were no
significant differences in the three groups' sleep efficiency when
melatonin was being produced in the body.
More
information
The U.S.
National Library of Medicine has more about melatonin.
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/05/05/hscout532477.html
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