Melatonin is a natural hormone produced by the body at night to help people fall asleep. Too much bright light at night or too little light in the daytime can disrupt the release of melatonin. The level of melatonin changes with aging and some diseases. Melatonin is most commonly used to treat insomnia or other sleep disorders. It is particularly helpful in the short term to improve sleep in the elderly, in blind people, and in children with developmental disorders, according to the National Institutes of Health. Melatonin may also be helpful in other conditions, including headache, cancer and nicotine-withdraw symptoms. Effective and safe dosage of melatonin depends on the patient and the disease in question.
Basic Approach for Determining the Dosage
High doses of melatonin can cause side-effects such as irritability, anxiety, nightmares, disruption of sleep pattern, and infertility. You may want to start out with the lowest doses possible. For very sensitive individuals, dose as low as 0.1 mg may work in relieving insomnia and other conditions. Your body normally produces less than 0.3 mg melatonin a day. Try to start with the doses within this physiological range and work with your doctor to increase the dose if necessary.
Melatonin for Children
Melatonin can help children with developmental disorders such as autism, cerebral palsy and mental retardation to fall asleep, according to the National Institutes of Health. In general, 5 mg of melatonin is given daily at specific time at night for this purpose. However, the University of Maryland Medical Center reviewed that doses between 1 to 5 mg can cause seizure in children under age 15. Check with the health care providers before giving children melatonin.
Insomnia and Other Sleep Disorders
Doses in the range of 0.3 to 5 mg are used for treating insomnia, although 0.1 to 0.3 mg works for some individuals. You can start with 1 to 3 mg of melatonin, and if not effective after three days, gradually increase the dose to 5 to 6 mg under your doctor's supervision, recommended by the University of Maryland Medical Center. Be careful not to go too high a dose because taking too much melatonin can produce vivid dreams and nightmares and cause drowsiness in the day. Take your melatonin 30 minutes to one hour before bedtime for sleep problems.
Other Conditions
The National Institutes of Health stated that melatonin is possibly effective for reducing cluster headaches and enhancing the effects of cancer therapies for certain types of cancer such as breast, colon, lung and prostate cancers. For these applications, higher doses of melatonin are used. For example, 10 mg of melatonin per day is used in the study of cluster headaches and seemed to reduce the frequency of headaches, according to NIH. In the same study, 2 mg of melatonin did not work. For enhancing the effectiveness and reducing the side effects of cancer treatments, melatonin in the dose range of 10 to 50 mg is commonly used. Patients generally start taking melatonin seven days before cancer treatment and continue throughout the course of the treatment. Melatonin can also be used to reduce the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. In this case it is typically used at a lower dose of 0.3 mg at 3 1/2 hours after smoking.
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