Around the nation, many Americans seek to optimize their sleep. However, this might lead to unintended consequences.
Melatonin, a popular over-the-counter sleep aid, has links to heart failure, a disease that affects more than seven million Americans, according to research released on Nov. 3.
“Insomnia can increase blood pressure, stress hormones, and inflammation,” Dr. Ekenedilichukwu Nnadi, internal medicine resident at SUNY Downstate/Kings County Primary Care in New York City, said, according to NBC News.
Nnadi and his fellow researchers examined health records from 130,828 older adults and found interesting results. Of the adults who took melatonin, 4.6% developed heart failure, compared to 2.7% among those who didn’t take the aid.
While the percentages might not scream caution, further analysis from Nnadi’s team revealed that the group that took melatonin had three times the chance of hospitalization for the condition, with 19% for the experimental group and 6.6% for the control group.
Natural Melatonin is a hormone that regulates the body’s sleep cycle. However, since the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate synthetic melatonin, brands often have different doses and purity levels in their products.
The sleep medication is also considered over-the-counter, which means it can be bought without the need for a doctor’s prescription. This muddies the study’s validity, since the researchers couldn’t control for the manner in which melatonin was administered.
Nnadi is scheduled to present his work to the American Heart Association. While the finding raises concerns, more research is needed to examine melatonin’s side effects.
“I caution people against drawing concrete conclusions based on this study alone…But now that we have this observation, this is prime time to figure out whether there’s actually a direct association of harm with sleep agents. That would be practice-changing,” Dr. Nishant Shah, a Duke University Medical Center preventative cardiologist, said, according to NBC News.
Lack of sleep is an issue that many face, and people often turn to melatonin to help them sleep. While Nnadi’s study didn’t include children in the data set, 4% of children were reported to take the medication, according to a survey from the Sleep Foundation in 2022.
