Jack found a story about how more kids than ever are taking melatonin to sleep. Could this be due to the incredibly high levels of anxiety in our kids?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Episode Transcript
Came across this story. Yes, they got my eye because
I give melotonin now and then to my kids. A
lot more kids are taking more melatonin than used to.
I don't remember every hearing about it until a few
years ago. It's a natural hormone that your body makes
to help you get to sleep at night, and then
so you can buy it in pills down give yourself
a little more that, in theory will help you get
(00:21):
to sleep and or stay asleep. I've tried it myself
and never had any reaction to it. So but more
and more children are using it. Nearly one in five
kids and preteens in the United States take the hormone
to aid their sleep. Many parents are regularly giving it
to their preschool aged children.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Preschoolers.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, they say it's not addictive and it doesn't do
any harm. I can't imagine how that's true. Doctors have
recommended it for my kids. Whenever you if you tell
your doctor your kids are having trouble sleeping, the first
thing they'll tell you if you tried melatonin.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Look, I'm the cross section of ideas that are not
good that I have done is a large cross section,
so goodness knows, I'm not criticizing people just because they're
trying their best. It strikes me that you're It's like,
you know, you tell your doctor I have blinding headaches
every day, and they tell you take this, you won't
(01:22):
feel a headache, as opposed to wait a minute. Sleep
is the most natural thing any human being can do.
If you are well, there's defecating. If you regularly can't
sleep as a child, there's something that we are masking
with melatonin we really ought to be dealing with.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
So I'm both a parent giving melatonin to his kids
and not arguing necessarily for it. I think it's a
bad idea. I know. It just doesn't make sense to
me that it doesn't. It's not addictive in the sense that,
so you started to give yourself melatonin, your brain is
going to produce less of it on its own because
it's getting that mount So you're gonna have to take
(02:11):
it because now you're not producing enough of it.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That just sounds addictive to me.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, exactly, how is that not addicted?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, and again, I'm not sitting up here on a
high horse. I remember well enough though my kids are grown,
what it was like day to day. You would like
to do a deep dive slash drill down on why
something is happening.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
But in the meantime, we were doing Yeggermeister shots. That
worked for a while, right, yeah, but that's not very
good sleep, lots of them.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So a third of kids and preschoolers getting melatonin. That's
just not right. That's wrong. Something is wrong here. The
canary and the Kimmel mine has crowked.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
But if we got so much anxiety out there, it's
probably not surprising that you know that many kids can't
sleep at night.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Why the anxiety? We need to get to root causes.
There you go, eventually, root causes.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Kamala.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Good one, Wow, did you call me Kamala? We're fighting
Armstrong and Getty.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.