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Melatonin

Today’s leading natural sleep aid is well-known for rejiggering circadian rhythms (the daily cycle of light and dark), which is what made melatonin the go-to supplement for jet lag.

Melatonin has been shown to decrease the amount of time it takes you to fall asleep; in one study with children, 3 mg per day of melatonin cut the time to snoozeville from 28 minutes to 4 minutes.

And there are other reasons to take melatonin. Researchers in Poland gave two groups of overweight postmenopausal women doses of either 20 mg of Prozac in the morning or 20 mg of Prozac plus 5 mg of melatonin in the evening. Although both groups reported better sleep quality and less anxiety, the melatonin group had double the combined sleep score. In addition, the melatonin group had an average combined body mass index (BMI) decline from 30.9 to 26.3 after 24 weeks, while there was no BMI change in the Prozac-only group.