Most Replayed Moment: Sleep Expert On The Truth About Melatonin And Magnesium

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

In this episode of The Diary Of A CEO, Steven Bartlett speaks with a sleep expert who debunks common myths about melatonin and magnesium, emphasizing that while melatonin is widely used, its long-term effects—especially in children—are poorly understood. The discussion highlights that sleep regularity, light exposure, and behavioral habits are far more impactful than supplements for improving slee

Key takeaways

• Melatonin use in children has surged, with a 503% increase in related hospitalizations over a decade.
• There is no evidence melatonin suppresses natural production, but long-term effects beyond 12 months remain unknown.
• Sleep regularity—going to bed and waking up within a 30-minute window—is more predictive of mortality than sleep duration.

Transcript preview

Are you concerned that melatonin is becoming more and more popular as a way to solve lifestyle that have called sleep impairment? Because I'm seeing loads of stuff, you know, I'm an investor, so I see lots of companies now pitching me different products that have melatonin in them as a sort of day-to-day sleeping supplement. I think I'm really torn, I've been on both sides of this argument and I'm cautious about it for two reasons. The first is in pediatric populations here in the United States. Pediatric? Yeah, so the people's use of melatonin in kids is increasing. So in pediatric populations it's increasing exponentially and in fact if you go down the sort of the supermarket aisles here in America, often if you go into sort of the health sort of food section, there's this big purple section, that's the melatonin section. proportion of that is they're dedicated to gummies for your children with melatonin. And there was a study that was published about three years ago that showed here in America over the past 10 years there has been a 503% increase in poisonous overdose admissions to hospitals of melatonin in the past 10 years. 503% increase. So firstly we've got to be a bit careful. The second reason, is a bioactive hormone and it's also involved in reproductive development and the studies done back in the 1970s I think where they were looking at juvenile male rats which is to say male rats who were going through adolescence and they were dosing them with high amounts of melatonin and what they found is that that stunted the development of the testes of the testicles and it caused testicular atrophy now these were very high doses but we've got to be a little bit we think we say well melatonin is a natural hormone so anything natural is safe melatonin overall in terms of its safety profile is very safe it's actually a very good antioxidant antioxidant but you've got to be careful because things like for example testosterone supplementation in males what we know is that if you're injecting testosterone after a while after maybe 18 months or so the testicles themselves will stop producing their own testosterone and even if you stop the exogenous testosterone, the injection. The testes never return their function of producing testosterone. Now we don't have any evidence yet that that's the case that if you keep taking melatonin at high dose your body, the fear would be, shuts down its own natural production of melatonin. I've seen no evidence of that. In fact, I've seen evidence the contrary that even after about six months or even 12 months in certain small cities, when you stop melatonin, the production starts again, the production starts again, the production starts again again. naturally it seems fine. Problem is people haven't been taking melatonin for just 12 months. They've been taking it for years. We've got no idea what happens after years. That was my hesitation when the first time someone offered me melatonin is from doing this podcast and speaking to smart people like yourself. I've come to learn this sort of principle that if you start making something for your body in terms of a hormone, if you start sort of consuming something externally like testosterone, your body will say fine I don't don't need to do it will try and return to that level of balance where the quantities in your system are maintained which means it kind of learns to shut down and I always think about the case of testosterone because men know that if we start injecting testosterone then we're going to have to pretty much do it forever if we want those levels to be the same yeah that's the worry is that there are no free lunches in biology and usually if you fight biology you typically lose always a tradeoff and always a tradeoff and some of my friends often like talk to me about like these miracle things or this thing or take my but what's the trade-off and I get most concerned when they say there isn't one because then I go shit we don't know it yeah you've got to be careful because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Be very careful when you're doing that deal with with your physiology so to come back to the sort of the three things the first thing we were mentioning is digital detox and don't worry about the blue light worry about light in general I'll come on to that because that's the second but Michael Gradazar, as I was saying, what he found is that the blue light doesn't really disrupt your sleep. It's a combination of first, these devices that we use are attention capture devices, and they are designed to fleece you of your attention economy, and they do it ruthlessly well. They've spent tens of millions of dollars designing these products to do that. So what happens is that these devices become hugely activating. And as a result, they essentially, will be a mute button on your sleepiness. So you could be there, you get into bed, it's 11 p.m. You think, I am so tired, I was falling asleep on the couch watching television. And then you get to his bed, you start going on to social media, and then you start doom scrolling, and then you get into this what we call bedroting, where you just sit there. And now you look at the clock and it's no longer 11 p.m. It's 1am, and you've just done But you have to be of a certain personality type he found. Not all of us are vulnerable to this sleep disruption of devices. You have to be someone who is perhaps neurotic, someone who has high impulsivity, or someone who is perhaps high anxious. If you are of any of those kinds, you should be really careful about your use of technology in the bedroom. Now for me to you know sit here and say look, put your phone in the car in the garage and that way, you know, you know, That's what I would love because what we've learned to do in this modern era is the first thing when you wake up. What is it that you do? No comment. What's it when you're not going to be? You. It's just you and I. I grab my phone before my eyes are even open. And what happens is this sort of small tsunami of anxiety washes over you. And it's a terrible way to wake up. Have you ever had the experience where you've got to wake up for an early morning flight? And it's a critical flight. You know that that night is not going to be a good night of sleep. It's going to be a shallow kind of sleep. It's what we call anticipatory anxiety. You are anticipating an anxious event in the morning. And studies have shown that when we create this anticipatory anxiety, the amount of deep sleep that you have drops significantly. You don't sleep as well. And therefore if we just do this little sort of version, this LITE version of the morning flight, which is we know that when we go to bed and we put our phone down, we know that when we wake up every morning, we're just going to open it up to that hit of anxiety every morning. No wonder our sleep can start to get shallow. Now I'm not going to sit here and say, well, don't take your phone into the bedroom because the genie is out the bottle and no matter what I say. It's not going back in any time soon. And a friend of mine, Michael Grandner, has got this beautiful framework where he says, you can take your phone into your bedroom, it's fine. But you can only use your phone standing up. Oh, what's his name? Michael Grander, he's brilliant. And what happens is that you're there and you think after about seven or eight minutes, I'm just gonna have a bit of a sit down here. Digital detox is the first friend that will really help your sleep. The second is regularity and will come on to regularity when we speak about what really makes for good sleep. If you were to only do one thing, not three things, but just one thing, go to bed and wake up at the same time, no matter whether it's the weekday or the weekend, regularity is king. Okay, so that's the third pillar. That's correct. Regularity. Okay. So that's the third pillar. That's correct. Regularity. Okay. me I created this framework of the four macros of good sleep. You've heard of the three macros of food, macronutrients, fat protein, copper hydrate. To me, there are four macros of good sleep and it's QQRT, and it stands for quantity, quality, and it stands for quantity, quality, and like pillars but the four legs of a chair and if any one of these becomes unstable the chair will topple over. So I'll probably start with the one that people have had me bang on about which is quantity seven to nine hours. This myth of eight hours is nonsense. It's a wonderful range. Seven to nine hours and what we know is that using that sweet spot of seven to nine hours when you get less than that the shorter your sleep the shorter your life. predicts all cause mortality. Now we say that there's the minimum of seven hours of sleep and some people have argued perhaps correctly that look if you look at these mortality curves there's not much of a percentage difference between sleeping six hours versus the seven that you're telling me is minimum. So six hours is just fine so all of this nonsense and rhetoric is is is silly from you and I think they've made a conflation because seven hours is just fine so all of this nonsense is the minimum amount of sleep that you need to survive. Because the way that we quantify what minimum is is based on whether you die or you don't prematurely. The amount of sleep that you need to survive is different than the amount of sleep that you need to thrive. And people will conflate the former with the latter. So you've got to be careful when people are sort of touting on social media saying, well, no, but look, there's not much difference between my survival. rate on six hours versus seven hours, you may have just as much of a long life, but the quality of your life will be very different. So that's quantity seven to nine hours. And is that, does it change for parents, by the way? Because I've met so many parents that seem to be functioning better than me, and they've got four, or five hours sleep. Did evolution not give parents any leeway or anything when they have kids that suddenly their brain changes and now they can survive with less sleep? The evidence doesn't suggest that once sleep? The evidence doesn't suggest that, you. get some magic sort of immunity shot that makes you resilient and not vulnerable to lack of sleep. And in some ways you could argue because we used to live as a collective tribe and we would share duties at that point, you know, Mother Nature doesn't really worry too much about you now because you've already procreated and you've passed on your genetic code. So you are now the sort of, you know,