There are some problems with Melatonin (as supplied) - you don't really know how much (if any) you're getting. Investigators found that quality control was very poor and some brands contained very little melatonin. (I can't find it now, but it was something like Consumer Reports or similar?)
It's a prescription only med in some places (UK) so you might not be able to get it.
But it is "remarkably effective"[1] for jet lag.
You might want to consider sleep hygiene[2] as well as (or instead of) melatonin or other sleep meds. (I really like zopiclone.)
Zopiclone can be habit forming and has an associated increase risk of road traffic accidents like most hypnotics - wikipedia is a good start for the risks.
I think melatonin is a better drug for correcting problems with sleep cycles which can include jet lag, changes in season and the like but there's plenty you can do help your sleep quality without drugs.
Here's a great article (about Huntington's disease but applies to everyone - it really helped me) based on a published paper in Experimental Neurology:
> (I can't find it now, but it was something like Consumer Reports or similar?)
Are you thinking of the Consumer Labs report? I quoted that in a footnote, but it does not show what you seem to think it showed:
> Can melatonin help you sleep? "Melatonin supplements may help some people get to sleep sooner, particularly those with chronic sleeping problems, but don't just buy any supplement - they vary [substantially] in strength, dosage, and cost," says ConsumerLab.com President, Tod Cooperman, M.D. ConsumerLab.com recently selected and tested nine different melatonin supplements. The testing showed that all contained their labeled amounts of melatonin, but the suggested daily dosage ranged from 1 mg to 50 mg [!]; and cost ranged from just 4 cents to $1.36 for an equivalent dose of melatonin. This means you may not be using the right dose for your needs and you could be paying as much as 33 times more than necessary. ConsumerLab.com also found that one supplement failed to properly disclose all of its ingredients.
That is, each contained all the melatonin it claimed to, but there were irresponsible doses being offered. Unfortunate, yes, but this is not a problem for anyone who did their homework and know what dose they want to try.
Wikipedia suggests prescription only in the UK. I think this is because it was banned as a food supplement in the 1990s, and only one medication got a licence, and that was a POM. Thus, any melatonin product is either an unlicensed medication (illegal) or prescription only.
The page you link to doesn't allow me to buy any product. Entering [melatonin] in their search box doesn't return any products containing melatonin.
That link shows some automated content brought in from healthnotes/aisle7 which is a Portland, Oregon based company. If you search Amazon UK for melatonin you'll find lots of supplement that are described as 'melatonin-like' but don't contain any active ingredients.
I buy it when I'm in the US which is fine for me as I take it for jet lag but I know GPs (family doctors) I talk to are often confused to learn they can prescribe melatonin and will often prescribe much more powerful and, in my opinion, dangerous hypnotics. I think that's probably because there's no patent on melatonin so not much marketing push to inform GPs of its uses - though I believe there's a patented slow release version of melatonin that might get a bit of marketing behind it.
There was a study by Kripke showing that many sleeping pills, namely benzodiazepines, tripled your likelihood of death even if taken very infrequently.
Zopiclone is not a benzodiazepine but I don't know if it has been studied in a similar manner.
It's a prescription only med in some places (UK) so you might not be able to get it.
But it is "remarkably effective"[1] for jet lag.
You might want to consider sleep hygiene[2] as well as (or instead of) melatonin or other sleep meds. (I really like zopiclone.)
[1] (http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001520/melatonin-for-the-pre...)
[2] (http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Insomnia/Pages/Treatment.aspx)