Some years ago, pediatrician Dr. Judith Owens noticed a disturbing pattern. A professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School affiliated with Boston Children’s Hospital, many of her patients are children who have trouble sleeping. “I’ve been in practice for 40 years,” she says. “There has been a seismic change in the number of patients I see, particularly in sleep clinic, who are now on melatonin.” It is rare, now, for her to see a sleepless child whose parents have not at least tried giving them the hormone.

It’s not just children. Between 1999 and 2018, the number of adults taking melatonin, which is available in the U.S. over the counter as a supplement, more than quintupled . It’s often marketed as a natural sleep aid—almost as if it were a vitamin. However, because it’s classified

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