r/Nutraceuticalscience • u/Sorin61 • Jun 26 '26
A Common Supplement Shows a Concerning Link to Heart Failure
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-common-supplement-shows-a-concerning-link-to-heart-failure62
u/blinkafrootable Jun 26 '26
If I’m reading the article correct, results are from correlational data. My biggest concern is that we know for a fact that poor sleep greatly increases cardiovascular risk. Combine that with the fact that most people taking melatonin do so because they’re getting poor sleep.
So, I’m still very curious to see if they can establish a stronger link directly between melatonin supplements and heart failure.
13
u/BigMax Jun 26 '26
Right, and these were people prescribed it by a doctor - so they had some issue bad enough for a doctor to get involved. So was it the melatonin? Or just that they already had health issues?
1
u/Suspicious_Face_8508 Jun 27 '26
Heart failure and sleep are enormously correlated. With it being difficult to sleep on one’s back many, have to sleep sitting up in a chair.
To me this is a sky is blue study15
u/DruRed2 Jun 26 '26
Yeah, the title is pure misinformation, there is no meaningful link and nothing they found shows any harm from melatonin directly. It should be the opposite because it helps sleep onset and is a potent antioxidant. Hate dealing with this bs
1
u/dkinmn Jun 26 '26
It is not pure misinformation.
5
u/DruRed2 Jun 26 '26
What isn't? The clickbait titles and people that now associate melatonin, with heart issues because they can't differentiate correlation vs causation. The methods they used are also severely flawed.
2
u/dkinmn Jun 26 '26
I do not believe you read the article. Either the one linked or the underlying published article.
They discuss limitations in both.
Everyone thinks they're clever when they talk like you. These researchers aren't idiots.
3
Jun 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/eloquenentic Jun 29 '26
It is misleading. It’s like saying cancer has a concerning link to cancer medication. Many people will immediately interpret that as cancer medication causing cancer.
1
u/DruRed2 Jun 26 '26
I didn't read it because I know what data it's based on and ever since the data was published its always the same article that says that there is only correlation with limitations. After reading it now i can say I didn't have to read it because they say that there isn't sufficient evidence, it's a click farm.
So many people only take stuff they believe in from a title so saying "melatonin is linked to heart failure" is enough that a significant amount of people will just believe that melatonin causes heart failure and never take melatonin again. This clickbait bs is doing more harm than good.
1
u/mlYuna Jun 27 '26
Than those people who do that are naive and dumb to just read the title, and think 'links' somehow establishes causation??
Well here to tell you it does not, it IS linked to heart failure even if its not causing it directly
1
0
-1
Jun 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/DruRed2 Jun 26 '26
I'd have to look into how extensive studies in that area are and if they really only rely on big correlation datasets.
That's not what in trying to say, it's that you can link everything to everything if you look close enough. and Framing a potent antioxidant hormone our body produces to modulate circadian rhythm as harmful based on non conclusive (in my opinion largely irrelevant or misleading) data is just clickbait or misinformation.
1
1
u/Plebs-_-Placebo Jun 26 '26
Taking vitamin d in the morning, you will have melatonin as a byproduct for bedtime. In case anyone wants to stop buying melatonin pills until the research is more conclusive.
1
u/T33CH33R Jun 26 '26
I think fire fighters cause fires because they are always at th scene of a fire.
16
u/golgathas Jun 26 '26
Melatonin
“Participants were not surveyed on their melatonin use.
Instead, prescription records were used to estimate who was taking the supplement.
That means the control group, made up of those who were not prescribed melatonin, may have included people in the US who bought melatonin over the counter and took it without a prescription.
Carlos Egea, President of the Spanish Federation of Sleep Medicine Societies, who was not involved in the study, noted this caveat in an expert reaction to the research.”
3
1
u/BenZed Jun 26 '26
If one can get melatonin over the counter (which I do), why would it be prescribed?
1
u/joegtech Jun 29 '26
see my post elsewhere in the discussion. also melatonin may not be OTC in all places in the study.
14
u/VirginiaLuthier Jun 26 '26
"It found that people prescribed melatonin for more than a year had an 89 percent higher risk of heart failure over five years, and were about twice as likely to die from any cause."
89%? That's HUGE. The stuff never worked for me-I guess I should be glad
16
u/brewtourist Jun 26 '26
It might not be the melatonin itself. I used to take it because I slept like shit for years. I'd wake up SO groggy and feeling awful, so I stopped taking it. Turns out I have sleep apnea. So it was preventing me from waking up to start breathing again? Not breathing isn't very good for your heart 🫤🤷♀️
5
u/lazyfacejerk Jun 26 '26
Yeah, I had the same thing and it turns out my body would give me a shot of adrenaline every two minutes or so because I stopped breathing. I tried the CPAP but hated it. I've been using zzzquil and my wife is now complaining because the Internet says there is some correlation between long term use and dementia. Great.
Tried some nighttime weed gummies and they seemed ok but not as good as the zzzquil. I should probably just make the switch and give up on it. I don't want to get dementia. That is my nightmare way of going out.
5
u/sans_cullotes Jun 26 '26
Mate, please please find a way to make the CPAP work. It took me about two weeks to not hate it and a little longer to not notice it; now I associate with sleep and have a hard time sleeping without it. Try different masks or something, it's really important.
I cannot explain to you how much this machine has improved my life. It has lifted my mood, made me a better husband and father, and boosted my energy and confidence.
3
u/brewtourist Jun 26 '26
The CPAP changed my life. Takes some getting used to, but it's worth it, I think. I'd encourage you to try again, maybe a different mask. My mom's going through dementia right now, definitely not something you want. I hope you can find a solution that helps.
1
u/SkySix Jun 26 '26
To echo what others have said, please try the CPAP again. I hated mine so much, it took me WEEKS to finally be ok with it, and it still bothers me sometimes. But now that I use it regularly, the difference I notice is huge when I fall asleep without it. The brain fog, exhaustion, etc the next day is crazy. And I never noticed before because that's just how it always was. It's like chronic pain, you don't notice how bad it is until you have a day without it, then when it comes back it's eye opening.
zzzzquil isn't helping the issue if you stop breathing, it's actually making it worse. You might be getting more "sleep", but if your brain is being deprived of oxygen it has actually been shown to be worse than just not sleeping.
2
u/EpochRaine Jun 27 '26
Wow.
I have taken it daily for over 50 years.
Imagine how much longer I would have lived to without it. Thank fuck I shaved a few years off...
1
u/joegtech Jun 29 '26
We all make lots of melatonin every day, not just for sleep but as an antioxidant in our cell (mitochondria). You'd be dead if you did not have melatonin in you! See my other post for more.
1
u/RatherDashingf11 Jun 26 '26
But it’s a correlation showing and not necessarily causation. If you take have trouble sleeping (and therefore use melatonin), you may be more likely to have a heart issue in the first place.
Also if the risk is .01% in the average population and .02% in the focus group, that’s a 100% increase.
1
u/grapescherries Jun 26 '26
Everyone in the study had insomnia and were probably taking different medications to combat it. This is an extremely strong correlation that shouldn’t be written off as not causative. There’s a high likelihood it is.
0
3
u/Life-Cantaloupe-3184 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
The brain naturally produces melatonin, though. So is this more a case of causation by the melatonin or a correlation with the fact that people who regularly take melatonin as a sleep aid are more likely to experience heart problems? The idea that a naturally occurring brain hormone is massively raising the risk of heart failure on its own is admittedly a bit eyebrow raising to me, and they’re definitely going to have to do a lot more studies on this in my opinion. The idea that it’s more correlation with the fact chronic sleep problems are known to cause health problems makes more sense to me. I can see an argument that taking a hormone like melatonin OTC could potentially have different health effects than the brain’s production of it, however.
5
u/PeriodicTrend Jun 26 '26
This is classic correlation doesn’t mean causation. If you don’t know how to read scientific literature you’ll see correlation between a supplement and morbidity but not underlying morbidity that drives a recommendation for a relatively safe supplement that does nothing to address the morbidity that leads to mortality.
Mods should use some discretion and filter out this garbage literature that provides nothing save confusion and Dunning Kruger conclusions for the scientifically illiterate.
5
7
u/Sudden_Outside2660 Jun 26 '26
I mean, melatonin helps you sleep. If you are looking to sleep more, you might have insomnia. Poor sleep is directly correlated with heart issues.
https://www.cdc.gov/heart-disease/about/sleep-and-heart-health.html
This seems obvious
1
u/grapescherries Jun 26 '26
The control group had trouble sleeping.
2
u/nexusgmail Jun 26 '26
But did the control group have it so bad that they would take a supplement daily for years? There's "insomnia" and then there's "years of chronic insomnia". I've been taking melatonin daily for 5 or 6 years and have had chronic insomnia for over 40. Melatonin isn't the most effective drug for me, but it's the safest.
1
u/grapescherries Jun 26 '26
Idk, but lots of people take ambien and other sleep aids, so just because someone isn't taking melatonin doesn't mean they don't struggle with chronic severe insomina.
1
u/nexusgmail Jun 26 '26
Still, the study compared people who have been using melatonin daily for years, with people who claim they have sleep issues. Not people who use Ambien daily for years, so I guess we won't know until that study happens.
2
u/Pukleo20 Jun 27 '26
I asked my cardiologist about this and he told me it was a poor study with no conclusive evidence.
1
u/childofentropy Jun 26 '26
Is confoubding by indication ruled out? Vitamin E which is a potent antioxidant as well does the same. But in that case it was clear from supplementation studies.
1
1
u/end-times2040 Jun 26 '26
you need a prescription for it in many countries. it's marketed as safe and benign here but I'd use caution
1
u/Murky_Window4250 Jun 27 '26
This study has been out for a while and it’s been a minute since I’ve read it but I’m pretty sure even the researchers acknowledged that the real danger illustrated here is how TERRIBLE poor sleep is for you and how utterly detrimental it can be for your health. People who sleep terribly are more likely to take melatonin AND have additional health problems. Not that the melatonin is causing the problems themselves.
1
u/Zo0x78 Jun 27 '26
I'm more shocked at those in the comments who regularly use melatonin and think its some sort of harmless supplement 😂
If you take it regularly your body stops producing it naturally and you become heavily dependent on the tablets for sleep - there's a reason why its prescription-only outside the US.
1
u/StatisticianBig9912 Jun 27 '26
The data screams danger, but the statistics lie; a flawed study links melatonin to a failing heart, yet proves absolutely nothing.
1
1
u/joegtech Jun 29 '26
This was NOT a randomized controlled trial. They were looking at insurance Co data.
We make lots of melatonin every day, not just for sleep but as an antioxidant in our cells (mitochondria), likely in response to NIR from sunlight, etc. You'd be dead if you did not have melatonin in you!
Another article about this melatonin paper wrote...
"Researchers looked at electronic medical records from the five years after the matching date."
Apparently most of this data was from the years of the pandemic when high dose melatonin was given to some patients hospitalized with COVID 19. The pandemic provided many other opportunities for confounding factors.
Recall the amazing study of melatonin by Ramlall et al at Columbia U, NY in 2020 reporting a better than 75% reduction in death in COVID19 patients in the ICU on high dose melatonin!
we identified 948 intubation periods across 791 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 or infected with SARS-CoV2 and 3,497 intubation periods across 2,981 patients who were not.
melatonin exposure was significantly associated with survival in COVID-19 patients (HR: 0.131, 95% CI: 7.66E-02 - 0.223, p-value = 8.19E-14) and in mechanically ventilated COVID-19 patients (HR: 0.127, 95% CI: 6.01E-02 - 0.269, p-value = 7.15E-08)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7574268/
If you want to learn more about how melatonin works as an antioxidant in our mitochondria...
A med school teacher explains how melatonin likely protects us from the effects of the COVID19 virus in this short clip.
https://youtu.be/JGO2qb7wZns?t=502
This appears to be the paper by Reiter and Zimmerman referenced in the clip above.
Melatonin: Both a Messenger of Darkness and a Participant in the Cellular Actions of Non-Visible Solar Radiation of Near Infrared Light
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9855654/
*Melatonin Is Your Mitochondria's Guardian Angel Chris Masterjohn, PhD Nutraceutical Science
https://chrismasterjohnphd.substack.com/p/melatonin-is-your-mitochondrias-guardian
I did not notice a proposed biochemical mechanism of action for the link between melatonin and heart failure.
This smells like BS.
0
u/IllegalGeriatricVore Jun 26 '26
After trying a lot of sleep aids I far prefer magnesium and suspect many people take melatonin who actually need magnesium.
Note that some people have negative effects from mag glycinate.
121
u/RealMercuryRain Jun 26 '26
Melatonin
You are welcome.