Take Melatonin? You’ll Want To Read This

Good morning!

Do you take melatonin? If so, you’re in good company. Roughly 64% of Americans have tried it. ¹ So odds are this edition applies to more than half of you reading this, and for the rest, you definitely know someone it does apply to.

On November 3rd, the American Heart Association (AHA) quietly published a study that raised very real questions about long-term melatonin use. And in a world where opinions circulate faster than facts, it’s worth pausing when the AHA weighs in.

Today, we’re unpacking what the study actually found and what you should do about it. Without further adieu, let’s go down the melatonin rabbit hole.

Key Takeaways

• Melatonin use has skyrocketed in the last two decades despite limited long-term safety research.

• A new AHA study raises serious questions about chronic melatonin use, showing strong correlations with heart-related risks.

• Natural sleep-support strategies like mindfulness, magnesium, and temperature regulation offer safer, effective alternatives that align with true holistic health.

CORE

What Is Melatonin?

Melatonin is often called the “sleep hormone”, but that’s a bit of an oversimplification. It’s actually a chemical messenger produced by your pineal gland (a tiny, pea-sized gland tucked in your brain) that tells your body, “Hey, it’s nighttime. Time to wind down.” Think of it as your body’s internal bedtime text.

Its production follows your circadian rhythm, the natural 24-hour clock that governs when you feel alert and when you feel drowsy. As daylight fades, melatonin levels rise, peaking in the middle of the night, then taper off toward morning.

In other words, it’s a hormone perfectly tuned to the cycle of light and dark. So doom-scrolling in bed is basically a chemical sabotage. A good book still beats blue light every time. Unless your book glows. Then… maybe dim it.

Why Everyone Takes It

Insomnia rates have climbed steadily for decades, with recent figures from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine estimating that about 12% of Americans now have chronic insomnia. ² And when something as important as sleep becomes a struggle, people look for solutions.

Historically, sleep troubles were treated with prescription sleep medication, which worked but created serious dependency. This is the perfect moment to introduce melatonin, touted as the best way to get some sleep for a long time, possibly until now.

Melatonin has been handed out to people of all ages for every kind of sleep trouble, largely because it was assumed to be completely harmless, including the idea that it doesn’t create dependence (we’ll dive into that later).

Over time, a hormone that’s prescription-only in the UK, Australia, Switzerland, and many other countries quietly became as casually consumed in the U.S. as your morning cup of coffee.

Is Melatonin Addictive?

Technically, no. It doesn’t shut down your body’s own production, so it’s not “addictive” in the chemical sense. But take it every night, and your brain starts to think you can’t sleep without it. 

What’s worse, commercial 5mg doses didn’t even exist until 2005. Today we have megadoses, and daily use has risen from 0.4% in 1999 to 2.1% by 2018, a nine-fold increase. ³ That’s some serious glow-up.

Melatonin is still a relative newcomer. The first 5mg dose became commercially available in 2005, and today doses over 20mg are common. Daily use has jumped from 0.4% in 1999 to 2.1% in 2018, a nine-fold increase. That’s just over a 9% increase year over year!

What was once a prescription-only hormone in much of the world is now taken nightly by millions in the U.S., often without a second thought.

The Breakthrough Study

The AHA study tracked 65,414 regular melatonin users for five years (all taking it for at least 365 days) and compared them to 65,414 people who never touched the stuff. The results? People on melatonin had an 89% higher risk of heart failure, triple the heart-related hospitalizations, and double the overall mortality over five years. That’s across 130,828 people, not a rounding error. ⁴

Before you throw your gummies in the trash, keep in mind this is correlation, not causation. The study doesn’t prove melatonin caused these outcomes, just that melatonin users happened to have more heart issues. Stress, insomnia, and anxiety tend to travel together, and they all raise heart risks. 

What this study has done is put innocent melatonin into question. It means the “completely safe for everyone, all the time” story needs a serious rethink.

What Should You Do?

The simple answer is to try to avoid adding things that are made by labs into your body if at all possible. Fortunately, supporting sleep doesn’t require hormone supplementation at all. 

As someone who personally struggles to get a good night's sleep, here are my top 3 ways to improve my sleep quality without playing Russian roulette with my health.

Mindfulness / Mental Quieting
I think people either get mindfulness or they don’t. I didn’t, until I read Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey. He explains how unresolved mental clutter keeps us wired at night. Things like, “did I turn the stove off” or “did my boss take that joke the wrong way?”.

This to say, build the habit of mentally “closing tabs” before bed. The difference is immediate.

More Magnesium
Magnesium calms the nervous system, supports GABA pathways, relaxes muscles, and lowers cortisol, all essential for deep sleep. Unlike melatonin, you’re not adding a hormone, you’re replenishing a mineral your body requires daily.

As a dietitian, I can’t stress magnesium enough, especially when roughly half of Americans are deficient. OmniBlue Original is my go-to, not just for magnesium, but  for the myriad of trace minerals that it delivers. Consider that OmniBlue has one of the cleanest mineral sources on the planet, and well, that’s a done deal if I ever saw one.

If you have any questions regarding OmniBlue (or this edition), I would be happy to personally address them. Just reply to this email and I’ll get back to you.

ENDNOTE

Final Thoughts

Elephant in the room, Black Friday is next week! It’s OmniBlue’s biggest sale of the year, and surprise, surprise, health really does make the best gift. Just giving you some heads up. Keep an eye on your inbox so you don’t miss it!

Until next week!

Adrian Macdonald | Team Dietitian | The 8% Newsletter Author