People looking for an aid to help with jet lag or another sleeping problem may be forgiven for hoping they can avoid using a synthetic version of melatonin. Synthetic hormones don’t have a high reputation, after the fiasco of the hormone therapies given to menopausal women in the past few years. The problems they experienced set the question of synthetic melatonin into high relief, because as well as being a sleep-regulating hormone, this substance is also influential on the reproductive system. So the problems experienced in one area with synthetic hormones, has people searching for a more “natural” alternative.
However, this is one supplement where things aren’t so cut and dried. Even when problems with synthetic hormones are acknowledged, man-made melatonin produced in a lab is still much safer than that derived from some “natural sources.” For example, one of the sources of melatonin that’s not created in a laboratory is the ground-up pineal glands of cows. There are already worries about the side effects of melatonin supplements, but using those derived from cows can add the extra worry of spreading disease. This was highlighted during the scare about mad cow disease, and people have been reluctant to use that type of supplement ever since.
The medical establishment tends to recommend synthetic melatonin as safer and more reliable alternative, considering the extra worries about the disease potential of supplements derived from the glands of cows. Yet even if you eliminate that problem with a synthetic product, you immediately run into another one, which is that dietary and herbal supplements are not regulated. This means you still have no real guarantee of a good product, or even one with consistent dosages and effects from package to package. You can gather all the health information available, but in the end, all you’ve really got is a hope that a particular product will be reliable, and delivers what manufacturers claim it will.
People can be glad that synthetic melatonin has never yet produced overdoses or toxicity, or had adverse effects similar to other synthetic hormones. Relief about this may hold melatonin fans long enough for a more natural treatment to be developed, from plants with their own high melatonin content. It’s possible that if those supplements become the standard, then this might solve everyone’s problems.