| Cocaine isn’t naturally occurring in every vertebrate animal as the hormone responsible for not making you depressed. Plutonium is naturally occurring as well, but it’s not a part of the fundamental biology of all animals. Melatonin is as naturally occurring in animals as blood and its purpose we use it for as a supplement is precisely what it does in the body. It’s nudging the natural levels slightly higher to induce exactly what it does and we desire from it. There’s literally no debate anywhere in any context as to whether it does what it says on the tin, because it literally is the thing that does the thing on the tin. But, you know, sure. Why not. Of course people did these studies because with positive results you’ll get published and it’s a bit of a softball, since it’s like, exactly what must be the result given the situation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33417003/ Results: Of 2642 papers, 23 RCTs met inclusion criteria. Our results indicated that melatonin had significant effect on sleep quality as assessed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) (WMD: - 1.24; 95% CI - 1.77, - 0.71, p = 0.000). Conclusion: We found that the treatment with exogenous melatonin has positive effects on sleep quality as assessed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) in adult. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31982807/ Conclusions: Melatonin was an effective and tolerable drug in the short-term treatment of sleep onset insomnia in children and adolescents. Etc There’s no controversy whether it works or not. The only controversy is on chronic supplementation, which is entirely fair. |