Melatonin is not recommended due to off-target effects, inaccurate labeling, and ineffectiveness for maintaining sleep.

“So should you take melatonin? My personal bias is no”

“Several times before on this podcast, I've talked about the fact that I'm not a big fan of melatonin supplementation for most purposes. It interacts with the reproductive hormones, testosterone and estrogen, and that whole access in ways that are unattractive, at least to me. It suppresses puberty during development.”

“I am not a fan of melatonin for enhancing the transition to sleep for a couple of reasons. One, dosages of melatonin are far too high in most supplements. Melatonin can have some negative effects on the sex steroid hormones testosterone and estrogen. That's a serious concern. Third, melatonin's role during puberty or around puberty is to suppress the onset of puberty. So that's concerning.”

“mainly the fact that most melatonin supplements out there don't actually contain the exact amount of melatonin that's listed on the bottle. They contain either much, much more or much, much less.”

“I am not a fan of melatonin for a couple of reasons melatonin is a hormone known to induce sleepiness but not keep us asleep so oftentimes people will take melatonin fall deeply asleep and then wake up and have trouble falling back asleep the other reason is that melatonin supplements almost always include levels of melatonin or amounts of melatonin that far far exceed the normal biological levels or so-called endogenous levels of melatonin that we would normally produce”