Steven AR Murphy: When Nighttime Medicine Turns Against the Heart
Steven AR Murphy, Medical Director, Concierge Medical Associates, shared a post on LinkedIn:
”The Melatonin Paradox: When Nighttime Medicine Turns Against the Heart
A new AHA study of over 130,000 adults has challenged one of the most common “natural” sleep aids. Beware but don’t jump to conclusions just yet, the Press and the American Heart Association have created a firestorm by Embargoing this press release…..
Long-term melatonin users—those taking it nightly for a year or more—had a 90% higher risk of heart failure and nearly double the mortality rate compared with matched non-users.
A secondary analysis found:
Participants taking melatonin were nearly 3.5 times as likely to be hospitalized for heart failure when compared to those not taking melatonin (19.0% vs. 6.6%, respectively).
Melatonin isn’t a sedative—it’s a circadian signal.
Chronic, off-timed supplementation may flatten the body’s internal rhythm, desynchronize cardiac mitochondrial clocks, and blunt the nightly repair processes that protect the heart.
At the cellular level, excess melatonin can suppress adaptive oxidative signaling, alter AMPK–mTOR balance, and reduce mitochondrial resilience. Over time, that quiet disruption becomes measurable heart dysfunction.
The lesson:
Sleep medicine must evolve into circadian medicine.
We need to restore light, temperature, and metabolic rhythm—not override them with nightly hormones. At Concierge Medical Associates we have a program dedicated for that where we work with Sleep Specialist Sahil Chopra, MD and his team at Empower Sleep
Safe strategies:
- Morning sunlight, evening darkness
- Cooling the body before bed
- Nutrients like magnesium, NR, and urolithin A to keep mitochondrial timekeepers synchronized
Melatonin should whisper in the dark, not shout for years.
Full analysis on Longevity Insider.
To A Life Well Lived,
-Dr. M.”
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