I haven't found anything that would point to total safety or the opposite. Then again, there are plenty of studies on the dangers of sugar and I still eat a bit of chocolate every day. Same for red meat, plastics touching food, caffeine, beer, being slightly overweight, driving, not using sunscreen regularly, stress, lack of sleep.
Is the risk of taking a small amount of melatonin every day really something to worry about in the bigger picture, if it helps you and has a long history of being used for this purpose without problems?
Like lots of people here I just can't beat my tendencies to stay up late despite massively good sleep hygiene. I end up missing sleep, being cranky and depressive, and generally having a lower quality of life because I just don't feel like going to bed - and when I do make it to bed I ruminate for a long time before falling asleep. If no new information presents itself, I plan on keeping good habits and being on melatonin for the rest of my life.
Sounds reasonable. I'll try it a little bit longer without melatonin, but if the issues with falling asleep persist, I'll probably start taking small amounts of melatonin again. It definitely helped a ton with falling asleep over the past few years, but I'm actually not sure how much of that is placebo.
Melatonin does (reasonably) well against placebo in the time-to-sleep studies I've read. If you want to read up, Gwern has the most accessible collection out there:
Is the risk of taking a small amount of melatonin every day really something to worry about in the bigger picture, if it helps you and has a long history of being used for this purpose without problems?
Like lots of people here I just can't beat my tendencies to stay up late despite massively good sleep hygiene. I end up missing sleep, being cranky and depressive, and generally having a lower quality of life because I just don't feel like going to bed - and when I do make it to bed I ruminate for a long time before falling asleep. If no new information presents itself, I plan on keeping good habits and being on melatonin for the rest of my life.