Candy crash

Is melatonin, handed out like sweets, a cure for kids’ sleep woes?

IT was the witching hour at our house, and while my 5-year-old daughter slept peacefully, my 3-year-old son began his nightly battle. For almost a year, he’d been caught between the urge to sleep and his brain refusing to surrender to it. When he did finally manage to drift off, the initial deep sleep never lasted long. Dark circles began to sag under his eyes.

I knew we needed help. So I didn’t blink when our pediatrician suggested melatonin. “Safe and effective,” read the label on the first bottle I held in my hand.

Our story is not unusual, says Dr. Judith Owens, director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital. She says that in her practice, which focuses on children and families with sleep problems, it’s rare for a child to come in who hasn’t taken melatonin.

“That was not true even five years ago,” Owens says.

A study from the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed a significant increase in the use of melatonin among children ages 4 to 17 between 2007 and 2012, up from 0.1 percent to 0.7 percent. Since publication, experts believe melatonin use has continued to rise in this population.

But how safe are these products for children? Because melatonin is classified as a dietary supplement, it’s not subject to the same scrutiny as medications approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. And what’s in some bottles is alarming.

A new study conducted at the Gosling Research Institute for Plant Preservation at the University of Guelph in Ontario suggests that the melatonin content of dietary supplements often varies widely from what is listed on the label (ranging from 83 percent less to 478 percent more), and about a quarter of all such products may be contaminated with serotonin (a controlled substance responsible for maintaining mood balance).

There are also side effects associated with melatonin, including headaches, dizziness and daytime grogginess.

Although some evidence exists showing that melatonin is safer than previously administered sleep aids such as Benadryl, Owens says long-term follow-up studies are lacking. Far more worrisome to Owens is the ease with which children who suffer from sleep problems are given pills. In her opinion, behavioral therapy, alone or in conjunction with a sleep aid, should be the first step. “[Otherwise,] when you take them off the medication, the problem is still there,” she says.

Screen time is a big factor — blue light suppresses the body’s own production of melatonin. Inconsistent sleep schedules also rank high.

As for my own son? After taking melatonin for six months, he grew increasingly restless. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night screaming.

Now that he’s been off of it for a month, he’s actually falling asleep at a regular bedtime. He looks like a completely new boy — no dark circles or bags! I don’t know if the melatonin helped regulate his sleep cycle — or if taking away all electronics earlier in the day also played a role.

I just wish I had known what to ask the pediatrician before jumping on a quick fix. Writer Crystal Ponti needed help for her sleepdeprived son, Luca.