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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.
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