Melatonin is a hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle. The active ingredient is used to treat sleep disorders (insomnia).
Melatonin is used for the short-term treatment of primary insomnia characterized by poor sleep quality. The drug is also indicated for the treatment of sleep disorders (insomnia) for children and adolescent
A natural hormone in the form of a pill, melatonin is even considered safe for babies; but, are they?
For any chemical to be viable for a baby, it should have the least of side effects. Shockingly, unlike the consensus, melatonin pills can have serious side effects such as seizures and loss of consciousness when it exceeds recommended dosage.
Melatonin overdose can cause side effects like headaches, nervousness, and stomach upset. Read this article to find the correct melatonin dosage you need to consider.
How Melatonin Works in the Body
For those of you who don’t know how melatonin works, it is the ultimate hormone that crosses the blood brain barrier to creating sleepiness as well as deep sleep. Melatonin is brain’s way of commanding the body to a sound sleep. From keeping the biological clock winded to being conscious, melatonin is notable for many restorative effects too.
If you’re a parent regularly giving your children melatonin pills, you must read the shocking, yet little-known truth about melatonin.
What is Melatonin Over dosage
The fact is, our body naturally produces lesser than or equal to 0.3mg per day of melatonin. Studies advocate any dosage from 0.3 mg to 1 or up to 6 mg per day, even though only a half of it is necessary for actuality.
With premium jobs such as sleeping and waking up, melatonin is necessary by the body. In short, with the increase of melatonin in the body, melatonin presence in the body also shoots up, crossing normalcy. Moreover, according to the addictive nature of the drug, melatonin is fairly addictive and easy to grow a habit for due to its relaxing hormonal effects.
For children, the right dosage of melatonin is from 0.3 to 1mg melatonin per day at an interval of 3-4 hours before bed.
Improving the immune system, and then optimizing it, is different and synonymous with healthy melatonin dosages. As sleep repairs your body to revitalize it and make it stronger, too much melatonin does make an exclusively strong immune system, which reaches the zenith and begins to destroy its own organs. Melatonin grows a strong immune system such that your body has to metabolize more to source energy for keeping the body strong.
When the immune system exploits energy to mine, the body gets weaker and finally ending even in death. If you consume above the normal dose of melatonin for a long time, you make your immune system stronger, but also a liability. One such example is the death of 50-100 million people in 1918 due to influenza pandemic as well as SARS or Avian Flu where death owed it to the overactive immune system. In short, an overreacting immune system reacts is worse than a weaker immune system.
Side Effects or Symptoms of Melatonin Overdose
You must discuss the effects you will go through when taking melatonin pills with your doctor before, to avoid OD-ing. Melatonin is a natural hormone, but if your body grows acquainted with a high level of melatonin to sleep every night, things will be tougher in the future.
1. Headache
The high presence of melatonin translates to more melatonin in the brain, which causes comprehensive immune restorative routine. This not only causes stress in the brain cells due to inflammatory reactions, which are also a significant cue of an over-strong immune system.
2. Nausea and Stomach Troubles
An overly active immune system also makes skin allergies, as you might be suffering from frequent diarrhea to indigestion. While the immune guard prevents allergies, it can also result in a stage that it is too strong and begins to destroy the body and its vital organs.
Moreover, when the sleep cycle is disturbed, our stomach becomes overstressed leading to unbearable pain in the abdomen as well. The same is why some people begin to vomit, experience rectal aches, diarrhea and lose appetite when overdosed on Melatonin. Many even become patients of Crohn’s diseases, a bowel disease that damages the digestive walls of our stomach.
3. Daytime Drowsiness
Any drug when taken in undue amounts results in an imbalance within the body. Moreover, sleep cycle falls steeply on a melatonin overdose. When your body notices the presence of too much melatonin, the brain signals it to fall asleep, which leads to daytime sleepiness even if you’ve just woken up.
4. Throat Constriction
Too much of melatonin pills also make your food pipe weaker due to the dissolution of the outer layer of your innards due to the melatonin pill. When melatonin is present in high amounts inside your body, choking and itching of the throat is a common symptom due to the relaxation or sleepy effect of the natural hormone. The same causes the muscles in your throat to relax, leading to the suffocated side effect.
5. Allergy and Inflamed lips
From rash to hives as serious itching, too much melatonin can lead to skin inflammations. A severe allergic reaction is a resultant shock experienced by your body due to undue melatonin. Yet another allergic symptom of melatonin overdose is inflamed lips, ears and throat.
6. Hormonal Imbalance
When your sleep cycle is pushed forward due to heightened deposits of melatonin, the body stops releasing melatonin naturally. Moreover, when you take too much of a natural hormone, other hormones that were precursors or successors to melatonin undergoes a drastic inhibition. Moreover, the sexual drive or libido also suffers a severe blow in cases if melatonin abuse.
7. Mood Swings
Melatonin release happens after the body produces tryptophan, which also produces serotonin, which leads to calming down stress levels. When you ingest too much of melatonin tables, possibly above 20mg per day, your emotional stability suffers as well.
Instead of relieving stress, when you overdose on melatonin, the clinical depression worsens. Some other mood related reactions when a person ODs on melatonin is paranoia and panic attacks.
8. Vulnerable to Auto-immune diseases
As a strong immune system leads to a state of self-killing by the immune system, the body becomes weak. The same is why, when your brain has too much melatonin, it becomes highly vulnerable to serious auto immune diseases such as HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis, Allergies and influenza.
9. Liver Damage
As melatonin is not recommended during melatonin course, you should remember that high amounts of the hormone can cause extreme stress on your liver. Too much melatonin causes heaping up of melatonin in the body and it produces high levels of glucose. As our liver protects the body from destroying itself due to toxins, too much of the pill-form of sleep hormone leads to Non–Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease or NAFLD.
10. Tremors or Seizures
From minor jerks to full-blown seizures, melatonin overdosage can lead to a metamorphosis of a sleep phase within the body. Epileptic patients have low levels of melatonin. Melatonin levels are high during seizures in epileptic patients, it rather causes erratic levels of melatonin.
11. Fatigue
Lethargy is also a prominent symptom that was observed amongst razing immune systems. In addition to daytime drowsiness, a constant worn out feeling is common to people with too much melatonin in their bodies.
12. Dementia and Confusion
Melatonin enters the body to trigger a restorative phase where memory storage as well as processing occurs. On the flipside, erratic levels of melatonin clashes with the deep sleep or REM sleep causing hallucinatory confusions much like dementia or even deliriums. In fact, kids who overdose on melatonin usually have similar symptoms.
13. Cardiovascular Side Effects
Melatonin can lead to lower blood pressure as well as an increase in cholesterol levels. This means that people who have cardiovascular disease should be careful when taking melatonin. It can also lead to abnormal heart beats.
14. Melatonin Effects on Blood Sugar
Many people suffering from diabetes type-1 have developed high blood sugar levels when using melatonin supplements.
15. Effects on the Reproductive System and Pregnancy
Melatonin causes decreased sperm count in men as well as breast enlargement. It also causes infertility in women and therefore should not be used by anyone planning to have children. In pregnant women it can cause developmental disorders in the fetus. It can also be transferred to the baby via breast milk for lactating mothers.
16. Hormonal Side Effects
Melatonin can lead to a decrease or increase in growth hormone, prolactin, thyroid, progesterone, cortisol and estradiol hormones.
Common Side-Effects Of Melatonin Over dosage
The most common side-effect of melatonin is headaches and altered sleep patterns. There are many more side effects, but they are usually temporary and reducing the dosage can help in relieving them. It is important to note that the long term side effects have not yet been known. The list below provides some of the short term side effects:
Myths and Facts about Melatonin Over dosage
According to statistics, for about 419,000 kids, parents have not missed prescribing melatonin since play school. Melatonin is a dietary supplement according to the FDA; but, imagine a kid who knows not how to control sleep will grow into?
Studies claim that melatonin when given to 30-400 people, had no addictive traits. However, addiction is much more than physical dependency. Hence, melatonin must be administered carefully when used for inducing sleep in minors.
Self Reactive Antibodies
A natural hormone made into a drug, melatonin can lead to self-destruction and the same is not a myth. Remember to avoid any chance of self-medicating with melatonin as the dependency grows with every passing minute. Moreover, it is next to impossible to keep a balanced level of melatonin, as it disturbs our immune system. The same is why melatonin overdosage can lead to self-reactive antibodies.
Melatonin is nothing but a death pill like Tryptophan, some time ago
A captivating rumor surrounding melatonin is that it was released just after tryptophan was banned. History says that tryptophan was introduced with full power as a sleeping aid but soon cases with side effects including unbearable stomach bleeding leading to death were also noted. Even though the adverse reactions with tryptophan etched fear, melatonin is nothing like it.
Melatonin for Kids
Kids suffering insomnia and sleeping disorders are often prescribed sleeping pills that are mellow to help the parents out during hyperactive somnipathies. The key to helping your kid get over insomnia is teaching how to wind down than administering the pills appropriately. Putting your kid on any dose that makes him or her dependent is not advised. If you must use melatonin pills, do not build a pattern of giving a consistent amount of melatonin every day or else the child’s body will stop producing enough melatonin to keep up with. The safest dose for a kid is 1mg at a span of once in two days.
How much melatonin is too much?
A shocking fact about melatonin is that all natural melatonin is harvested from the brains of pigs and cows. Being a natural hormone, melatonin when introduced to the body unnaturally, natural glands adapt to a lower release.
If you continue the same dosage for a week ahead, your body will stop generating enough melatonin required for your body, but really on the meloset or similar melatonin pills. Hence, you keep adding to the dosage every day, which also shoots up your tolerance, finally reaching the zenith where your body and brain collapses alongside fatal internal bleeding.
Pregnancy
It is highly recommended that all pregnant women should avoid melatonin pills or substitutes at all trimesters. When mixed with pregnancy, melatonin pills affect the biological clock of your baby as well. The same also results in the baby taking birth with sleeping disorders and insomnia right out of the womb. Moreover, melatonin can also cause seizures, chills and irregular heart rate in pregnant women due to the already erratic hormone levels.
Vivid Dreams
Melatonin is a supplement than a drug and the same is why it is not as powerful as other sleeping or soothing pills. Dreaming is a part of REM sleep and melatonin being a natural hormone within the body produced by the brain for sleep, melatonin can induce colorful dreams.
Interaction with other drugs
Regardless of how mellow the dosage of melatonin is, alcohol is a dangerous additive to take with melatonin pills. The same applies to the strong category of benzodiazepines and other anti-depressants. Ensure that you get permission from your doctor before combining it with other medicines.
Hair Loss and Hallucinations
Among the most common side effects of sleeping pills are hallucinations, confusion and psychosis. Melatonin being a mild and safe sleeping pill induces hair-loss owing to the dehydration in your scalp. The more dependent you grow to melatonin, higher your degree of side effects become.
Melatonin Overdose Death
Mild side effects are part of melatonin’s toxic arsenal; however, death is not one of it. Facts advocate that in the history of melatonin pills during case study ranging from 1.6 mg to 6mg dosage, none displayed side effects.
The most shocking thing is 3 people tried suicide but none of them even needed any medical treatments or after-care post the suicide attempt. The first person took a lower dosage than the daily prescription while the second took 20x 3mg tablets and the third took 50x3mg tablets. None of them needed any medical attention.
The most important fact to keep in mind is that not anything above regular dosage is not recommended.
What Happens If You Take Too Much Melatonin?
Even though melatonin occurs naturally in the body, it can be overdosed by the use of melatonin supplements. It is important to know how much melatonin one should take as mentioned above. In case of an overdose, you may have the usual melatonin side effects but it can also lead to other serious problems such as:
There are no standard treatment procedures for melatonin overdose, but it is important to seek medical attention if you think you have had an overdose. Each problem requires supportive care and treatment which primarily treats the symptoms of the overdose.
Melatonin Overdose Treatment
Getting enough sleep is very important and melatonin works as a sleeping aid for those who are not able to sleep well. Many factors lead to the reduction of natural melatonin in the body, such as illnesses and old age and also stressful life conditions and lifestyles. This is why the consumption of a safe and trusted dosage of melatonin supplements can go a long way to help you sleep. It also helps the body to produce normal levels of melatonin again. Have in mind that using the right melatonin product will have a positive effect in the future as you will require lesser of it. The important thing to note is to take the right dose at the right time for healthy sleep and life as well.
What should you do if you’ve taken too much melatonin?
- Stay Calm and drink sips of water.
- Put a soothing track without vocals.
- Find your bed.
- Sit and conduct deep breathing exercise for five minutes.
- Lie down on your bed and switch off the lights.
- Attempt to sleep.
- After you wake up, your sleep cycle will be back to normal.
If you’re using melatonin for occasional jet lag or insomnia, you should use lesser than 6 mg of melatonin per day before bed. The same is why, when your dependency graph changes or gains more tolerance when you become more addicted to the drug.
Remember, melatonin overdosage is half-myth if you’re a person who never exploits chemicals. If you’re looking for a good night’s sleep, a mere 0.3 mg per day will do!
Stay healthy!