Nature's own sleeping remedy helps you feel fresh and rested

An alarming number of people rely on sleeping medicine in order to get some shuteye at night, but there is a better - and completely natural - way of dosing off. Melatonin, a hormone that is produced in the brain at night, can help you go to sleep whenever you want to.

Transatlantic travelling by plane messes up your 24-hour periodicity because you cross several time zones At night, when it is dark out, most of us start feeling tired. We climb into bed and have absolutely no trouble falling asleep. Not everyone is that lucky, however, and surprisingly many people rely on sleeping medicine, but these drugs only make you drowsy and are not really able to produce a restful sleep. A new and better alternative has come up, though: a natural hormone called melatonin. The substance, which is nature's own sleeping remedy, gets produced in the brain in response to nightfall. Basically, what it does is to regulate our 24-hour periodicity - the so-called circadian rhythm (see box).

Melatonin researchers do not quite agree entirely on how melatonin helps promote sleep. Two possible mechanisms be at play: either melatonin alters your circadian rhythm, shifting the time that you normally fall sleep to a more desirable time of a day, or else it has a direct sleep-inducing effect. One thing is for sure, however, when you take melatonin in tablet form, the following changes take place:

- you feel less tense

- your reaction time slows down

- your pulse rate drops

- you feel a sense of tranquillity

- your body temperature goes down

- you begin to feel sleepy

Helps most, but some benefit tremendously

So far, melatonin seems to have a sleep-inducing effect in virtually all individuals. However, some seem to benefit particularly much from using this natural sleeping aid, and the two groups are a) people who produce relatively low amounts of the hormone (elderly people, for instance) and b) individuals whose melatonin rhythms are out of phase with their desired sleep schedules. This group includes shift workers, jet travellers, people who produce melatonin unusually early or late at night, and those whose melatonin rhythms shift from day to day.

Elderly people seem to be those who benefit the most from melatonin when it comes to sleep improvement. It is well documented that older people produce less melatonin than younger people, simply because the body's endogenous melatonin production drops with age.

Ideal cure for jetlag

Transatlantic travelling by plane messes up your 24-hour periodicity because you cross several time zones. People who do this type of travelling often suffer from jetlag. Melatonin comes in handy as an excellent source of prevention in such cases.

Under normal circumstances, you will have trouble feeling tired at the desired point because you are suddenly introduced to an entirely different time. What you can do is to take a melatonin tablet in order to induce drowsiness. That way you can fall asleep whenever you want to, that being upon arrival at your destination, on the plane coming back, or once you have returned to your starting point.

Athletes who travel to distant locations use melatonin as a way of avoiding jetlag. That way they are not bogged down by fatigue when they compete or train actively.