Melatonin Reduces Amount
of Deep Sleep

At first glance, the miracle-drug-of-the-month, melatonin, seems like a good answer. Melatonin is readily available in health food stores and is, after all, a hormone the brain itself uses to inform the body that darkness has fallen and it's time to rest. Unfortunately, like sleeping pills, melatonin supplements seem to induce only light sleep.

Neuroscientist Rod Hughes and psychiatrist Clifford Singer, at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, have found that an oral dose of melatonin actually reduces the amount of stages three and four sleep by around 40 percent. "At least that's what we see in people who are younger than 60 or 70," says Hughes. "In older subjects, it doesn't reduce deep sleep as much because there isn't much to start with."