Improving sleep hygiene can address many children's sleep disturbances.
Melatonin is a hormone that regulates sleep and wake cycles.
New guidelines for melatonin supplements promote responsible use and child safety.
Recent studies suggest melatonin may help children with neurological conditions.
Melatonin is a hormone naturally produced in the brain that plays a crucial role in regulating sleep and wake cycles. It's stimulated by darkness and suppressed by daylight. Melatonin supplements, available as pills or gummies, can help adults and adolescents fall asleep faster for short periods but their long-term safety for children is unclear.
Recent studies suggest that melatonin may be recommended for children with neurological conditions like autism spectrum disorder or ADHD under healthcare team supervision. However, parents should exercise caution when giving young children melatonin due to limited information about potential long-term effects.
The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) has adopted new voluntary packaging guidelines for makers of melatonin supplements to promote responsible use and ensure child safety. These guidelines include child-deterrent packaging and improved cautionary labels on over-the-counter products.
Despite the benefits, it's important to note that melatonin is not a magic solution for sleep issues. Many children's sleep disturbances can be addressed through improving their sleep hygiene, such as maintaining a consistent nighttime routine and creating a dark and quiet bedroom environment.
Parents should consult with their child's healthcare team before considering melatonin supplementation to identify underlying causes of sleep disturbances. In the meantime, they can focus on implementing proven bedtime routine behaviors like adhering to the same bedtime each night, avoiding bright lights and electronics in the bedroom, and creating a calming environment for their child.
The Council for Responsible Nutrition has adopted new voluntary packaging guidelines for makers of melatonin supplements to promote its ‘responsible use.’
New guidelines for gummies were also issued, including a request that manufacturers consider packaging gummy products in containers with child-deterrent closures and labeling advisories.
The CDC reported 11,000 emergency department visits for unsupervised melatonin ingestions by young children from 2019 to 2022.
Accuracy
]The Council for Responsible Nutrition has adopted new voluntary packaging guidelines for makers of melatonin supplements to promote its 'responsible use.'[
New guidelines include labels that remind users that melatonin can cause drowsiness and the implementation of child-deterrent packaging.
Melatonin supplements are commonly used as a sleep aid and can cause issues for those taking high doses.
Deception
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None Found At Time Of
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Fallacies
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No fallacies found in the author's statements. However, there are appeals to authority and inflammatory rhetoric present in the article.
] The Council for Responsible Nutrition adopted guidelines...
The new guidelines come over a month after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that unsupervised exposures to melatonin supplements among young children have substantially increased.
Taking higher doses can cause drowsiness, daytime sleepiness, headaches and nausea, officials said.
Melatonin is a hormone that helps promote sleep naturally in the body.
Parents should exercise caution when giving young children melatonin due to limited information about potential long-term effects.
Accuracy
Over 80% of respondents in a survey wished for more sleep.
Nearly half of parents who have children struggling with sleeping at night have administered melatonin.
Melatonin supplements are not regulated the same way food and drugs are in the US.
Deception
(30%)
The article contains selective reporting and emotional manipulation. The author quotes statistics about people wanting more sleep and mentions a survey of parents using melatonin for their children without disclosing the source of these statistics. This is selective reporting as it only presents information that supports the author's position. Additionally, the title 'Many parents give their children melatonin at night. Here’s why you may not want to.' implies a negative stance on melatonin use for children without providing any evidence in the article to support this claim, which is emotional manipulation.
According to a survey of more than 11,000 people across the globe, over 80% of respondents said they wished for more sleep. Conversely, just 10% claimed they slept enough.
Many parents even use over-the-counter sleep aids. In fact, another survey shows that nearly half of parents who have children struggling with sleeping at night have administered the supplement melatonin.
Melatonin industry given 18 to 24 months to add child-deterrent packaging and improve cautionary labels on OTC melatonin products
More than half of accidental ingestions involved children between 3 and 5 years old
About three-quarters of documented cases involved bottles, suggesting young children were able to open or bottles not closed properly
Four of the gummies tested contained levels of CBD higher than on label
Accuracy
New labels should warn consumers about drowsiness, not take with alcohol, and intended for intermittent use only
Deception
(100%)
None Found At Time Of
Publication
Fallacies
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None Found At Time Of
Publication
Bias
(95%)
The article does not demonstrate any clear bias towards a specific political, religious, ideological or monetary position. However, it does contain several statements that could be perceived as critical of the melatonin industry and its lack of regulation. The author also quotes experts expressing concerns about the safety of melatonin supplements for children and the potential risks associated with inaccurate labeling and unintended ingestion by young children. While these statements are not biased in themselves, they do paint a negative picture of the industry and could be perceived as biased against it.
About three-quarters of the documented cases involved bottles suggesting that young children were able to open the bottles or that the bottles were not closed properly.
]The industry recognizes that melatonin supplements do pose serious risks particularly to children[
There's no data that supports the use of CBD in children. It's currently only recommended for a very specific use in children over 1 (year old) with intractable seizure disorders.
