Your argument essentially amounts to the following:
Melatonin significantly improves sleep quality.
It has no side effects.
It has low cost.
If all of these are true, then who wouldn’t want to take it? However, you spend a lot of time on discussing point 3, but little on points 1 and 2, which are arguably the most important. How do you know that Melatonin really improves sleep quality so much? Is it just based on your personal experience (and perhaps that of other people you know)? If so, that is not convincing, as large scale randomized controlled studies are generally the only way to reliably tell if a medicine works. There are too many complicating factors like individual differences between people, the placebo effect, random fluctuation, reversion to the mean, difficulty in remembering how we felt in the past, etc. to rely on anecdotes.
Another point that your article does not address is the fact that there is a difference between a medicine having no known side effects, and a medicine ACTUALLY having no side effects. Any time that you take medicine you are taking a risk of a reaction that is unknown, or which failed to be uncovered in any studies that were done on it. For example, it is probably unknown whether a decade of Melatonin use (rather than just one or two years) causes problems of any kind. This sort of danger is unfortunately difficult to quantify, but I believe deserves at least some mention.
Upvoted for truth. The original article basically amounts to saying, “There’s this drug that will totally improve your life, guaranteed, with no side effects, trust me ! Now go ahead and ingest it.” Ummm yeah that’s great, but I think I’ll wait for some long-term studies to tell me things like this:
What are the long-term side effects of the drug ?
How will this drug interact with any other drugs I might be taking ?
What is the correct dose for me personally ? What are the consequences of an accidental overdose ?
Overall, how likely is this drug to kill or cripple me ?
Until those questions are answered, I’m not taking this drug, regardless of how cheap it is.
Your argument essentially amounts to the following:
Melatonin significantly improves sleep quality.
It has no side effects.
It has low cost.
If all of these are true, then who wouldn’t want to take it? However, you spend a lot of time on discussing point 3, but little on points 1 and 2, which are arguably the most important. How do you know that Melatonin really improves sleep quality so much? Is it just based on your personal experience (and perhaps that of other people you know)? If so, that is not convincing, as large scale randomized controlled studies are generally the only way to reliably tell if a medicine works. There are too many complicating factors like individual differences between people, the placebo effect, random fluctuation, reversion to the mean, difficulty in remembering how we felt in the past, etc. to rely on anecdotes.
Another point that your article does not address is the fact that there is a difference between a medicine having no known side effects, and a medicine ACTUALLY having no side effects. Any time that you take medicine you are taking a risk of a reaction that is unknown, or which failed to be uncovered in any studies that were done on it. For example, it is probably unknown whether a decade of Melatonin use (rather than just one or two years) causes problems of any kind. This sort of danger is unfortunately difficult to quantify, but I believe deserves at least some mention.
spend a lot of time on discussing point 3 This is by far the biggest failing of the post, it grates hugely. It’s cheap, we get it.
Upvoted for truth. The original article basically amounts to saying, “There’s this drug that will totally improve your life, guaranteed, with no side effects, trust me ! Now go ahead and ingest it.” Ummm yeah that’s great, but I think I’ll wait for some long-term studies to tell me things like this:
What are the long-term side effects of the drug ?
How will this drug interact with any other drugs I might be taking ?
What is the correct dose for me personally ? What are the consequences of an accidental overdose ?
Overall, how likely is this drug to kill or cripple me ?
Until those questions are answered, I’m not taking this drug, regardless of how cheap it is.