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More kids are taking melatonin to sleep — but is it safe?
A recent study from the University of Colorado Boulder suggests nearly 1 in 5 parents give their school-aged children melatonin to help them sleep.
MINNEAPOLIS — A research team at the University of Colorado Boulder recently surveyed 1,000 parents to see how many use melatonin to help their school-aged children fall asleep at night.
The results showed nearly 1 in 5 children use melatonin to help them sleep.
Among kids ages 5 to 9, the study showed 18.5% were given melatonin in the previous 30 days.
For pre-teens ages 10 to 13, the number was even higher at 19.4%.
The study also showed that 6% of preschool kids ages 1-4 had also used melatonin in the past month.
Authors of the study say these results suggest a significant increase in melatonin use in children, as researchers say a previous survey in 2017-2018 showed around 1.3% of parents reported giving their children melatonin to help them fall asleep.
“Melatonin is a little bit of a gray area,” Hennepin Healthcare pediatrician Dr. Krishnan Subrahmanian said.
Subrahmanian said some studies show children on the autism spectrum, with ADHD, and/or diagnosed with sleep disorders may benefit from using melatonin.
He said some other children may also benefit from using melatonin, depending on their unique circumstances.
However, he often encourages parents to pursue other sleep solutions first before giving melatonin to their children.
“Options like creating a more consistent schedule at night, a warm bath, turning down the television lights, or turning down the screen lights. Also, dimming the lights around the house. All of those lights can make us think we’re awake or we’re supposed to be awake,” Dr. Subrahmanian said.
He also encourages parents of younger children to consider their child’s naptime routine.
He says children who are around 18 months old will often begin to transition from two to three naps a day to one, and children around the age of 3 will begin to transition from one nap per day to none.
He says children around these age groups may have a hard time falling asleep at night if they are getting too much sleep, or too little sleep, during the day.
“Because melatonin is over the counter, it’s not regulated in the same way as the FDA would regulate other things. When you buy a product over the counter it’s hard to tell exactly how much melatonin is in there,” Subrahmanian said.
An additional study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this past spring highlights the melatonin potency concern.
Researchers looked at 25 products that contained melatonin and found one product did not contain a detectable level of melatonin, but did contain 31.3 mg of CBD.
The remaining products contained melatonin levels that were 74% to 347% of the quantity that was marked on the label.
That means some products contained nearly three times more melatonin than what was advertised on the label of the bottle.
To read the full research study from the University of Colorado Boulder click here.
To read the full research study published in the JAMA click here.
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The crash happened when a Suburban pulling a trailer failed to stop at a stop sign, Minnesota State Patrol said.
WAUKENABO, Minn. — Two people from Minnetonka died in a crash Friday in Aitkin County while others, including children, were hurt.
According to Minnesota State Patrol, it happened at the intersection of Highway 169 and Grove Street/County Road 3 in Waukenabo Township at approximately 5:15 p.m.
A Suburban pulling a trailer was driving east on County Road 3 but did not stop at the stop sign at Highway 169, authorities said. The vehicle was struck by a northbound GMC Yukon. Two other vehicles were struck in the crash, but the people in those two cars were not injured.
In the Suburban, the driver sustained life-threatening injuries, according to State Patrol. Elizabeth Jane Baldwin, 61, of Minnetonka, and Marlo Dean Baldwin, 92, of Minnetonka, both died. Officials said the driver of the vehicle, a 61-year-old from Minnetonka, has life-threatening injuries.
There were six people in the Yukon when the crash occurred. The 44-year-old driver, as well as passengers ages 18, 14, and 11, sustained what officials described as life-threatening injuries. The other two passengers have non-life-threatening injuries.
Alcohol is not believed to be a factor in the crash, but officials said Elizabeth Jane Baldwin had not been wearing a seatbelt.
Among those at the start line this year will be Alex Vigil.
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Pixar’s second installment of the movie features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
MINNEAPOLIS — Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” universe plays out inside the mind of the movie’s adolescent protagonist, Riley.
She plays a kid from Minnesota whose family uproots her life by moving to San Francisco. But did you know that what plays out in Riley’s mind actually comes from the mind of a real-life Minnesotan?
“You are one of us!” said Breaking the News anchor Jana Shortal.
“Yes, I am!” said Burnsville native and the movie’s creator and director, Kelsey Mann.
Mann was chosen for the role by ANOTHER Minnesotan — Pete Docter, the man behind the original movie, “Inside Out.”
“I don’t know if Pete asked me to do this movie because I was from Minnesota and he was from Minnesota … I just think it worked out that way,” Mann said.
How two guys from the south metro made a pair of Pixar movies that would change the game is a hell of a story that began with Docter in 2015.
“He [Docter] was just trying to tell a fun story — an emotional, fun story — and didn’t realize how much it would help give kids a vocabulary to talk about things they were feeling because they are feeling those emotions, but they’re really hard to talk about,” Mann said.
Some parents, counselors and teachers might even tell you it did more good for kids than just entertain them. It unlocked their emotions and begged for what Mann set out to create at the beginning of 2020.
“That part was fun, particularly fun,” he said. “I think the daunting part was following up a film that everyone really loved.”
But Mann knew what he wanted to do with the movie’s follow-up, “Inside Out 2.”
“Diving into Riley’s adolescence … that was just fun,” he said.
This time around, Riley is 13, hitting puberty and facing all of what, and who, comes with it. The franchise’s second installment features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
“I think that’s what’s fun about the ‘Inside Out’ world: You can take something we all know and give it a face,” Mann said. “We can give anxiety a name and a face.”
The film follows Riley’s emotions fighting it out for control of her life. Joy wants Riley to stay young and hold on only to joy, while anxiety is hell-bent on taking over Riley over at the age of 13 because as a lot of us know, that’s when anxiety often moves in.
“I always pitched it as a takeover movie, like an emotional takeover,” Mann said. “Anxiety can kind of feel like that; it can take over and kind of shove your other emotions to the side and repress them.”
For a kids’ movie, it’s hard to watch this animation play out, even when an adult has the keys to decide.
“I’m making a movie about anxiety and I still have to remind myself to have my anxiety take a seat,” Mann said.
All of our individual anxieties have a place in this world.
“The whole movie honestly is about acceptance. Both acceptance of anxiety being there and also of your own flaws,” said Mann.
Even for our kids, we have to remember that this is life.
Anxiety will come for them; it does for us all.
The “Inside Out” world just shows them it’s so.
