A New York Times reader asks: Is there good evidence on the effectiveness of melatonin for sleep problems?
Melatonin has been shown to be effective in randomized clinical trials — the kind considered the gold standard in medicine — but it may work better for some sleep problems than others.
“There is pretty strong evidence it’s effective for jet lag,” said D. Craig Hopp, a program director at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, part of the National Institutes of Health. But “the evidence is more equivocal for chronic things like insomnia.”
