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Marta Girma

What happens when melatonin expires?

Bob Myers  Follow

“Expiration dates” of one year are put on almost all prescriptions and supplements. Actually, if pills are stored in a dry area at moderate temperatures, most are fine for ten years or so. Nitroglycerine under the tongue for angina is an exception.It should be replaced when outdated or six months after opened. Insulin also starts to lose effectiveness if outdated. The melatonin should be fine. It won’t hurt you. If it seems less effective, you can just increase the dose.

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Benit Black  Follow

One of 2 maybe 3 things 1 nothing like food there expectation datea are usually closer to a suggestion. I've taken pletty of expired mess that worked fine.

2 it losses it potency, simply will no longer cause an effect

3 depending on storage it may have something visibly wrong with it a mold/ fungas. But you would be abe to see and feel that something was wrong

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Deirdre Rose  Follow

Melatonin doesn’t “expire”. There is a diurnal production of melatonin from your pineal gland in response to natural light that regulates sleep and cyclic rhythms. Some foods contain melatonin as well. When it is low and supposed to be high your body makes more of it. You can manipulate the cycle by taking melatonin exogenously.

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Dalton Mendeleve  Follow

At that point you melatonin is significantly less active according to FDA guidelines. They are still safe to take but will deliver a smaller active dose.

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Adam Shakur  Follow

It just doesnt work as well. A doctor once told me, in regards to pills, that as long as they were breaking into powder or melting in your hands, you could typically assume they were fine. Expiration dates were put there because of laws being forced upon them by pharmacy companies wanting to make sure they got to keep selling the meds. The pills themselves mostly remained stable unless something got to them to make them not. She had been a chemist before she became a doctor.

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Catherine Salierno  Follow

Most pills simply decrease in potency/effectiveness after the expiration date. Do not attempt to compensate for this by taking extra though because there's no way for you to tell, short of laboratory testing, how much their potency has changed.

Funny fact: if you don't know they expired, then nothing because of the placebo effect. I have a friend who took melatonin pills like 6 months after they expired and they did their job “perfectly”.

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Alexandre Courvoisier  Follow

Not much. The compound might degrade a bit, but the components into which it breaks are unlikely to be dangerous. The process is slow, and the expiration date is a rather nominal point. Even a few years after the expiration date, 80–90% of the substance should still be active.

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David Wilcox  Follow

When melatonin reaches it’s expiration date, it is 90% effective. At that point the melatonin starts to degenerate rapidly. Following zero order kinetics, it starts to curve downward at a must faster rate so that a year after the expiration date, the melatonin is probably only 50% active. At two years, 20%. The point being, don’t bother taking it after it reaches the expiration date. There’s really nothing to gain, it won’t work. Buy a new bottle. Also, some medications become toxic at some point after the expiration date, and there’s really no way to know exactly when. Thanks for the question. Adios.

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Arthur Macgregor  Follow

Nothing. It loses potency slowly over time like all hormones it's pretty unstable but in tablet form it loses almost no potency. The expiration date doesnt really mean anything. I love buying expired supple!emts bucause i get the same thing for half the price.

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