From "Something Weird Is Going On With Melatonin/Pediatric overdoses have increased by 530 percent over the past decade" (The Atlantic).
We're talking about 3 to 5 year old children eating gummies that are infused with a substance that is believed to promote sleep. Are the kids getting into what seems like candy or are the parents trying to put their kids to sleep?
ADDED: There's an old tradition of quieting children down with drugs. See "The poor child’s nurse/Charming family scenes in Victorian adverts for children’s medicines were in stark contrast to some of the dangerous ingredients that the products contained. Alcohol and opiates, such as laudanum, were among the substances helping to ‘soothe’ the nation’s children."
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39 comments:
Gummies with medication in them are a TERRIBLE idea.
And I hadn't even thought about parents trying to get their children to go to sleep. Thanks for planting that seed - start the day right and all...
does gummies help babies overcome white supremacy by sleeping longer? genius solution!!!
+ icrease melanintonin?
Dope them up with ritalin, dope them down with melatonin. Parenting is hard. Easier just to drug them. This trend has been going on for decades. Mother's little helper indeed.
I’m guessing it’s the latter in at least some instances. Not completely unprecedented, as NyQuil and Benadryl have been used for the same purposes in the past.
What is with putting drugs in so-called "gummies"? Take a goddamn pill like an adult! Or smoke a joint if that is your thing. These full sized (I hesitate to call them adults) human beings buying THC gummies is revolting and pathetic.
The actual CDC study says there's been a 530% increase in pediatric melatonin ingestions, not overdoses. Basically, this represents the number of calls to poison control.
95% of the calls involved unintentional ingestion (i.e., not parents providing it to their kids). 99% of these cases were not serious (no symptoms beyond mild stomach upset). Of the few cases requiring hospitalization, most involved intentional overdose by teenagers.
Note too that this study tells us nothing about how many kids are taking melatonin intentionally and effectively.
The pharmacy counter has kiosks with children's sleep aids branded with cute bees. I admit to using children's benadryl when my kids were sick, happy to have an excuse to get them asleep. This, however, appears to be a gummi issue. Medicine should never be packaged like candy.
I really dislike that this is labeled as a melatonin issue. A child who ate 10 vitamin C gummis would have trouble, too. This is about usage.
"The industry has many well-known problems: a lack of scientific evidence for the benefits of certain products, a habit of misleading marketing, a deep reliance on magical thinking."
I thought they were referring to the Biden administration.
At least black berry brandy is a know quantity.
We only have 2 two kids, so claiming expert status is a stretch. My wife was a schedule Nazi, for the first 4 years of their life. Scheduled naps EVERYDAY.Always the same bedtime. Schedules are calming for the child, and negotiation was an unknown option to our kids. Bedtime problems are often a function of an exhausted little one. That's where the naps come in. (no, we never gave them liquor, but its much safer guessing)
this is CRAZY!
if you want your babies to sleep, just give them some fentanyl.. That's what is FOR!
REMEMBER! start drugging your children Early!! don't wait Too Long!!
I imagine that some people really distrusted Flintstones chewable vitamins when those first came along.
I saw this the other day and immediately assumed it was parents trying to get their kiss to sleep. Not just at night, but for naps during the day.
That's a deep stack of percentages to digest for most. I can only think of comments regarding the historic connection between lies and statistics. I am most sympathetic to the case made by Tom T.
My suspicion? There's an "activist" of some kind at work here. Someone needs to make a case for state authority over parenthood. Huh? This - It all adds up in the way we absorb impressions and jump to conclusions over the long game, and this is a very long game.
If made in China, beware of tricks and contamination per fake baby formula products.
Thinking back to my childhood, it's likely mostly caused by children. Kids find gummies hard to resist. I ate handfuls of vitamins for fun and they were either flavorless, had a bad artificial orange flavor, or the disgusting vitamin B flavor. We also had a huge tub of vitamin C powder that became functional lemonade.
Asleep, awake, awoke, dead? Viral vector? Trans- therapy.
And then there's Ritalin...
"human beings buying THC gummies is revolting and pathetic."
The things have too much sugar too. But you need an Rx for Marinol.
Seems that THC has to be infused with fat and so it ends up in the worst foods. It always comes down to cookies or brownies or candies.
And so hard to control dosage. Take a little too much and the weirdness comes on and at 74 I just don't dig that anymore.
Good for sleep though. If you don't have a psychotic break first.
My mother recounted stories from the old country when women with young children who were needed to work in the fields gave their children opium, with some of the children never waking up.
[viral-vector] Vaxxxines.
Anti-depressants?
Puberty suppressants.
George "Fentanyl" Floyd, perhaps.
Masks.
It might have been the other ingredients in the gummy, say the artificial dyes like Red Dye 40, that caused the issues. Red dye 40 is notorious for causing reactions in some kids.
Anyway, the LD50 has never been established. What is being established is that melatonin has a plethora of advantages that can undercut pharmaceuticals. High dose melatonin has efficacy against, gasp, The Virus. And I mean HIGH dose, not the piddly doses they use in trials. See peer reviewed, science-based papers published by Russel Reiter and Doris Loh to try to grasp how melatonin works in the body. It's not just a sleep aid. That's old news.
"The industry has many well-known problems: a lack of scientific evidence for the benefits of certain products, a habit of misleading marketing, a deep reliance on magical thinking."
They have the same problem in the pharmaceutical industry.
One explanation for variation in dosage per gummy is that each unit (one gummy) must maintain its dosage at or above the amount of active ingredient stated on the bottle label. Any reasonable shelf life for the gummy supplements, so vast numbers of unsold bottles aren't just thrown out weekly or monthly, requires allowance for natural degredation of the active ingredient over time. So a fresh gummy might be 3x the dosage compared to one at the end of the "Best By" date, but the latter will still have at minimum the dosage claimed on the bottle.
The problem is caused by instability of the active ingredients, and government requirements to meet minimal dosage. Failure to maintain claimed dosage over life of the product comes with severe penalties, and the feds check on this a lot. But who cares, really, about a maximum dosage, on a supplement that won't hurt you unless you eat a hell of a lot of supercharged gummies?
I still like my Flintstone chewable vitamins, and will continue dosing or overdosing with one Fred, Wilma, Barney, Betty, Pebbles, Bam-Bam, and so on, every day.
And I hadn't even thought about parents trying to get their children to go to sleep. Thanks for planting that seed - start the day right and all...
When I was a kid, they just put some booze in the bottle, and we liked it.
ersey Fled said...
"The industry has many well-known problems: a lack of scientific evidence for the benefits of certain products, a habit of misleading marketing, a deep reliance on magical thinking."
I thought they were referring to the Biden administration.
I was thinking "everyone on the Left".......
Had an elderly Brit, years ago, tell me mothers used to mix brandy with grape jelly for teething kids.
Mentioned that to a food nazi acquaintance who was incandescent; "Do you know how much sugar is in jelly!?"
Many years ago I was prescribed niacin. One can easily feel the flushing that results from taking it.
On one occasion the pharmacist could not get it quickly, and advised me that the niacin in the supplements aisle was exactly the same.
I asked him why I should be paying $5 with $95 of the $100 cost of the prescription paid by my insurance, when I could just be paying $5 full-stop. He shrugged his shoulders.
10 years on, the flushing effect I'm getting from the supplements starts getting variable. I try several different brands and they all aren't controlling the level of active ingredient. So I go back to getting it on prescription, and the felt effect is now the same with each dose, not up and down randomly.
My husband’s grandmother used to talk about giving kids laudanum and phenobarbital for colic. She was a mom in the late 1920’s early 1930’s.
"Alcohol and opiates, such as laudanum, were among the substances helping to ‘soothe’ the nation’s children.""
Until Americans can walk into any gas station or supermarket and buy laudanum, we're not truly free.
"If made in China, beware of tricks and contamination per fake baby formula products."
Yup. Only a fool ingests something made in China.
Panic over mildly harmful gummies (thanks for the facts, tom T) while pumping the same kids full of powerful psychotropics as they ponder whether to cut off their boobs and wangers . . .
It's so 2023.
Dana Perino on The Five as always complaining about the discarded roaches that her dog eats, and now it's dogs and "Spice" (fake reefer--yuck!)
I long for the days of original Vicks 44 cough syrup, with its 60 proof alcohol content and amazingly medicinal flavor. It was Vicks Vap-O-Rub in edible form.
The only thing in my childhoodeven close to grabbing 2 or 3 or 4 tablespoons of Vicks 44 when a cold was brewing, was eating a spoonful of Lipton Iced Tea Mix raw when my mother wasn't looking.
Something Weird Is Going On With Melatonin/Pediatric overdoses have increased by 530 percent over the past decade
I'm guessing the unscientific scribblers at the Atlantic didn't think to check the percentage increase in sales of melatonin gummies in the past decade -- if they did they'd realize what's weird to them is actually simple math.
“ Joe Smith said...
And then there's Ritalin...”
Tell me about it…
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/03/medicating-the-masses
Per reporter Robert Maynard, the school was partnering with doctors to “drug black children into quiet submission.”
Melatonin isn't the only thing being put into gummies - acetaminophen is, as well.
An acquaintance of my husband's mentioned this weekend that his grandmother died from liver failure - apparently, she was addicted to some brand of gummy, thinking it was just candy. Turns out it was a delivery vehicle for acetaminophen, and she was popping them like Pez.
I doubt seriously that any problem from ingesting meletonin gummies came from the melatonin. As Karen of Texas said, "Anyway, the LD50 has never been established.. There doesn't appear to be a lethal dose at all, much less an LD50.
One of my go to sites for drugs and supplements is WEBMD. Here's their site for Melatonin overdose:
https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/melatonin-overdose
It's a struggle to even define what symptoms are or what an overdose is. And they don't define overdose. And IMHO- it's likely anyone complaining of melatonin overdose was likely taking other things with it- legal or not.
Melatonin aids my sleep. Ususally. Last night at midnight took my normal daily dosage of melatoning and tryptophan, and at 0230 gave up trying to sleep and got up and wandered aimlessy over the internet until about 0630, then slept until 1030.
Oddly, on nights when I have a glass of wine when getting home from work- sleep aids don't help at all. And if I have 2 or more glasses, don't need any further sleep aids...
Can I sleep witout them? Sure. Just the sleep is more fitful, takes longer to drit back off after the body's boss- the bladder- awakens me for nocturnal business, and I don't ever recall dreaming. Everyone dreams, even when they don't remember dreaming. But my dreams with melatonin and tryptophan are more vivid. Also strnge, but then, I think that's how dreams are supposed to be.
No worries. The kids will progress to Tide Pods in a couple years.
"What is with putting drugs in so-called "gummies"? Take a goddamn pill like an adult!"
So much this. Putting THC in gummies is childish on its face. And I say that as someone who likes weed.
Mom used to give us Paregoric (tincture of opium) in a teacup with a little warm water and sugar. Delicious stuff.
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