Natural hormones, such as melatonin pills, are considered safe for children. But, are they?
A chemical needs to be safe for babies if it is going to become a viable option. Melatonin supplements may cause serious side effects such as seizures and even unconsciousness if they exceed the recommended daily dose.
How Melatonin Works in the Body
Melatonin is an amazing natural supplement for helping people get better quality sleep. It creates drowsiness, and deep sleep, and helps people fall asleep faster.
Melatonin is the brain’s way to tell the body when to go to bed. Melatonin is known for its restorative properties, including helping keep the biological clock wound up and conscious.
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 Overdose?
The fact is, our body naturally produces lesser than or equal to 0.3 mg per day of melatonin. Some studies recommend doses ranging from 0.3 milligrams to 1 or up to 6 milligrams daily, but only one-half of it is actually needed for effectiveness.
Melatonin is essential for sleep and wakefulness.
Melatonin levels rise when melatonin is present in the bloodstream. When melatonin crosses into the bloodstream, its level rises.
Furthermore, according to the addictive properties of the drug, melatonin is fairly addictive and easy for people to get addicted to because of its relaxing hormonal effects.
Children require 0.3 to 1 mg of melatonin per day at 3-4 hour intervals before going to sleep.
Improving your immune system by taking melatonin is different from optimizing your immune system by taking high doses of melatonin. When you take too much melatonin at night, your body will repair itself by making you healthier, but if you take too much melatonin at night, it will make your immune system stronger than normal, which will lead to organ damage.
Melatonin helps your body grow stronger by giving you better immunity. It makes your body need to metabolize more to keep itself strong.
When the immune system uses energy to attack the brain, the body becomes weak and eventually ends up dying.
Melatonin is usually safe at lower doses; however, if you take high amounts of melatonin over a longer period of time, it may weaken your body’s natural immunity.
For instance, the 1918 flu pandemic killed between fifty and one hundred million people. It was caused by an overactive immune system. Other diseases caused by an overactive immunity system include SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and avian flu.
An overly reactive immune response is worse than a less responsive one.
Side Effects or Symptoms of Melatonin Overdose
Before you take melatonin pills, talk to your physician about the side effects you might experience. If your body becomes familiar with a high dose of melatonin during nighttime hours, your body will become accustomed to having it each time you go to bed at nighttime.
Headache
Melatonin has a high presence in the body, so when we take melatonin supplements, our bodies produce more melatonin. This makes us feel better because melatonin helps restore our immune system.
Inflammatory responses in the brain cause stress in the brain’s neurons. These neuronal stresses are also a sign of an overly strong immune system.
Nausea and Stomach Troubles
If your immune system is too active, it may cause skin rashes, as well as frequent stomach cramps, constipation, and even indigestion. The immune system protects us from foreign invaders by preventing them from entering our bodies. However, when the immune system is constantly engaged, it can cause damage to the body and even lead to organ failure.
Furthermore, when the sleep cycles are disrupted, our digestive system becomes stressed out causing unbearable abdominal pains. The same reason why some people start vomiting, experiencing rectal pains, diarrhea, and losing their appetite after taking too much melatonin. Some people get Crohn’s disease, which causes damage to the digestive wall lining of the intestine.
Daytime Drowsiness
If you take too much of any drug, it will result in an imbalance within your body. Furthermore, when you take too much melatonin, your sleep cycle will fall quickly.
If your body detects the existence of too much melatonin, it sends a signal to your brain telling it to go to sleep. As a result, you may experience drowsiness even though you've just awakened from bed.
Throat Constriction
Melatonin is an effective sleep aid but too much of it makes your food pipe weak because it dissolves the outer lining of your stomach.
If melatonin is present in large quantities within your body, choking and itching of the throat may be common side effects because of its relaxing or sleepy effects. It also causes the muscles in your throat and tongue to relax, which leads to the choking sensation.
Allergy and Inflamed lips
Too much melatonin can cause rashes, hives, and even severe itchiness. An extreme allergic response is an immediate shock experienced by your body when exposed to too much melatonin. Another side effect of taking too much melatonin is swollen lips, ears, and throat.
Hormonal Imbalance
If your sleep cycle gets pushed forward because there are greater amounts of melatonin in your bloodstream, your brain stops producing melatonin. Furthermore, when you take too large an amount of a natural hormone, you may suffer from hormonal imbalances.
If this happens, then other hormones that are preceded by or succeed to the hormone in question will be inhibited. Also, your sexual drive or libidos might get severely damaged.
Mood Swings
Serotonin production occurs when the body produces tryptamine, which also causes melatonin to be released, leading to calmness and relaxation.
If you take too many melatonin tablets, possibly above 20 mg per day, your emotional balance may suffer as well.
If you take too much melatonin, the side effects worsen rather than improve. Other than feeling paranoid and panicking, some other common side effects when someone overdoses on melatonin include anxiety and panic attacks.
Vulnerable to Auto-immune diseases
A healthy immune response leads to a state of “auto-killing” by the immune cells, which makes them weaker. The reason why, when your brain is exposed to too much melatonin, you become highly susceptible to various types of autoimmune disorders including HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, allergies, and flu.
Liver Damage
Since melatonin isn't advised when taking melatonin supplements, you should be aware that too much of the hormone can cause severe stress on your liver.
If you take too much melatonin, your body will produce too much melatonin and it will cause an increase in blood sugar. Too much of the medication form of melatonin can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
Tremors or Seizures
Overdosages of melatonin may result in various kinds of health issues, from mild headaches to full-blown convulsions. Patients who suffer from epilepsy have lower-than-normal levels of melatonin.
Melatonin level is high during seizures in epileptics, which makes them experience erratic melatonin level.
Fatigue
Lethargy is another common symptom associated with razing immune system function. Constant tiredness is often experienced by people who have too much melatonin in their bodies.
Dementia and Confusion
Memory consolidation and retention occur during a restorative phase where melatonin enters the brain. On the other hand, erratic levels of melatonin clash with deep sleep (REM) thus making people confused, dazed and disoriented much like dementia or even hallucinations. Kids who take too much melatonin may experience similar side effects.
Myths And Facts About Melatonin Overdose
For about 419,000 children, their parents haven't missed giving them melatonin since they started attending play schools. Melatonin is a natural substance, but imagine a child growing up without knowing how to regulate his/her own sleep cycles.
Some studies conclude that melatonin has no addictive properties. However, addiction is far more than physical dependence. Therefore, melatonin must be given cautiously when used to induce sleep in children.
Self Reactive Antibodies
Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that has been turned into a drug. It may cause self-destructive behavior if taken in large doses. Try not to self-medicate by taking melatonin.
As you get used to using melatonin, the dependency may grow. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to maintain a balanced level of melatonin, as it interferes with our immune systems. Overdosing on melatonin can cause self-reactive antibodies.
Melatonin is nothing but a death pill like Tryptophan, some time ago
It has been rumored that melatonin was released just after tryptophan was outlawed. History has shown that tryptophan came into use as a sleep aid but soon cases with severe side effects including uncontrollable stomach bleeding leading to death occurred.
Despite the fact that the side effects associated with tryptophan are scary, melatonin isn't anything like them.
Melatonin for Kids
Children who suffer from sleep disorders due to hyperactivity are often given sedatives to calm them down. To help your child get over sleep issues, teach him/her how to wind down before bedtime rather than giving them sleeping pills.
It's never advisable to put your child on any dose that makes them dependent. Do not build a habit of consistently giving melatonin pills every day. If you do, your child's body may begin to lose its ability to produce sufficient amounts of melatonin, which could lead to sleepiness. A safe dosage for kids is 1 milligram taken every two days.
How much melatonin is too much?
One surprising thing about melatonin is that most natural melatonin comes from the brains of pigs and cows. When melatonin is introduced to the human system unnaturally, the gland adapts to a lower production rate.
If you keep taking your medication at the same rate for one week ahead, your body won’t be able to produce enough melatonin to help it sleep. So, you keep increasing the dose every single time, which also increases your body’s ability to tolerate the drug, eventually reaching the point where your body and brain collapse together with fatal internal bleeding.
Pregnancy
Pregnant mothers should not take melatonin supplements during any trimester. Pregnant women taking melatonin supplements may be affecting their unborn babies' biological clocks. The same also leads to babies being born with sleep disturbances and insomnia right after they're born.
Furthermore, melatonin can also be responsible for causing seizures, chills, and an irregular heartbeat in pregnant women because of their already high hormone levels.
Vivid Dreams
Melatonin is a natural substance that helps people sleep better at night. It is not as strong as other drugs used for the same purpose. Dreaming is an important part of Rapid Eye Movement sleep and the release of melatonin from the brain during sleep plays a role in dream production.
Interaction with other drugs
Even if the dose of melatonin isn't high at all, taking melatonin along with alcohol is actually risky. The same applies to antidepressants in general. Make sure you ask your physician for advice before combining it with any other medications.
Hair Loss and Hallucinations
Common side effects of taking sleep medication include hallucinations, confusion, and psychosis. Because melatonin is a mild and safe sleep aid, it causes dehydration in your scalp and thus leads to loss of hair. As you depend more on melatonin, the more likely you are to experience side effects from taking it.
Melatonin Overdose Death
Melatonin has mild but manageable adverse effects. However, death is not among them. According to studies, there were no reported side effects when taking melatonin at doses between 1.6 mg and 6 mg.
The most surprising thing was that three people attempted suicide but none of them actually required any medical treatment or after-care following their attempts. The first person had taken half the prescribed dose; the next person had taken three times the recommended dose, and the last person had taken five times the recommended dose. None of these people required medical assistance.
Keep in mind that any dose above the normal one is not advised.
Melatonin Overdose Treatment
What should you do if you’ve taken too much melatonin?
- Don't panic! Drink some water.
- Play some relaxing music.
- Get into bed.
- Sit down and breathe deeply for five minutes.
- Lie down on your bed and turn out the light.
- Try to fall asleep.
- Once you've woken up, your sleep cycle should return to normal.
Finally
You should use less than 6 mg of melatonin per day if you're taking it occasionally for jet lags or sleep issues. The reason why is that your addiction graph changes or becomes less tolerant when you get less dependent on the drug.
Don't worry too much about melatonin overdose. It's not really a myth if you're someone who doesn't exploit chemicals. A mere 0.3 milligrams per daily dose will help you get a good night's sleep.
Keep yourself healthy!
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