I understand the appeal. The label says “natural.” The gummies are shaped like little bears. They are right next to the vitamin C at the checkout. Nothing about that environment signals caution.

But “natural” and “safe at any dose” are not the same thing. Arsenic is natural. Cortisol is natural, and chronic overexposure to that will age you faster than almost anything else I know. The dose makes the poison. Every physician knows this. Somehow with melatonin we collectively forgot it.

Here is what we know from the research: when you chronically expose melatonin receptors to supraphysiological doses, the body does what it always does when it gets too much of a signal — it turns down the volume. Receptor density decreases. Your brain becomes less sensitive to the signal. Now you need more melatonin just to get back to baseline function. We have observed this pattern with every other hormone we can measure. There is no physiological reason to expect melatonin to behave differently.

You gave your child melatonin so they would sleep. Now, when they skip it, they may sleep worse than before because their system has adapted to the flood. That is not supplementation. That is a dependency you created out of convenience.

I am not saying this to shame anyone. I am saying it because the physiology is what it is, and parents deserve to understand what they are actually doing when they reach for that bottle.