Melatonin has long been the go-to supplement for anyone struggling to fall asleep.
It sits in bathroom cabinets across the country as a fairly gentle, widely trusted sleep aid, albeit one only available via prescription. However, new research suggests it might actually be doing something else useful, too: helping ease ongoing aches and pains in the body, not just helping you drift off. Scientists pulled together a whole stack of previous studies to get a clearer picture of whether this everyday supplement could help with long-term pain, not just sleep. Here’s what they found, and what it could mean for anyone dealing with aches that just won’t go away.
Melatonin does more than just help you fall asleep.
Most of us know melatonin as the natural chemical our bodies make to signal it’s time to wind down and sleep. Taking it as a supplement basically tops up what your body already makes, giving your brain a nudge that it’s time to slow down for the night.
Scientists have suspected for a while that melatonin might do more than just help with sleep, based mostly on tests done with animals rather than people. This new research set out to properly check whether that same pain relieving effect actually holds true for humans too, rather than relying only on animal studies.
Scientists looked at results from thousands of people
Rather than running one single new study, researchers gathered results from 23 earlier studies involving just over two thousand people across different countries. These were people dealing with all sorts of long-term aches and pains, including bad backs, arthritis and widespread body pain conditions like fibromyalgia.
On their own, none of these smaller studies were big enough to say anything for certain. However, once all the results were combined together, a much clearer pattern started to show up than any single study could have shown alone.
Melatonin helped ease pain for a lot of people.
Looking at all the combined results, melatonin helped reduce pain for people dealing with ongoing aches in their muscles, bones, and joints. On average, people taking melatonin reported a noticeable drop in how much pain they were feeling, roughly nine points lower on a hundred point pain scale.
In some cases, melatonin worked about as well as other pain relief options people already reach for, including stronger painkillers as well as everyday options like paracetamol. For a supplement that’s cheap, easy to find, and already sitting in a lot of people’s homes, that’s an encouraging result.
It didn’t help everyone in exactly the same way.
Interestingly, melatonin didn’t work quite the same for every group of people studied. For people recovering from a recent operation, it didn’t seem to make a real difference to their pain levels, suggesting it works better for pain that’s been sticking around for a while rather than pain from a recent injury or surgery.
The clearest benefits showed up specifically for people dealing with long-term, ongoing pain, rather than pain that had only just started. This suggests how well melatonin works might really depend on the type of pain someone’s actually dealing with.
There were a few mild side effects worth knowing about.
Like most supplements, melatonin wasn’t completely free of side effects in these studies. Some people reported feeling a bit sick, getting headaches, or feeling dizzy while taking it, though these effects were generally mild rather than serious.
Melatonin is generally seen as safe to take for a short stretch, usually around one to two months, especially for people who aren’t pregnant or breastfeeding. What’s less clear is how safe it is over a much longer period of time, which is something researchers think deserves a closer look going forward.
Why melatonin might help with pain in the first place
Scientists have a couple of ideas about why melatonin seems to help with pain. One theory is that it helps calm down stress and damage happening inside the body’s cells, thanks to some of its natural properties.
The other theory comes back to melatonin’s main job, helping you sleep better. A better night’s sleep gives your muscles more of a chance to properly relax and recover, which could naturally mean feeling less achy the next day as a knock on effect of simply sleeping more soundly.
This isn’t meant to replace your usual pain relief.
The researchers behind this study were clear that melatonin isn’t meant to completely replace other pain medications. Instead, they suggest it could be used alongside existing treatments, potentially helping people rely a little less on medications that come with bigger risks or stronger side effects.
Anyone thinking about trying melatonin specifically for pain should have a proper chat with a doctor first, since everyone’s pain and health situation is different. What helps one person’s long term pain won’t necessarily work the same way for someone else, given just how different pain can feel from person to person.
What this could mean going forward
Researchers are hopeful that melatonin could end up doing double duty for some people, helping them sleep better while also easing their pain at the same time. Given how cheap and easy to find it already is, that combination could help a lot of people managing long-term aches and pains.
Long-term pain is famously complicated, though, often tangled up with all sorts of personal, emotional and lifestyle factors that differ from person to person. Because of this, researchers are careful to point out that melatonin probably won’t work for absolutely everyone, but even helping a good chunk of people manage their pain a bit better would still be a worthwhile step forward.
