Hi there, it's Matt here and welcome back to the podcast.

Previously I've discussed Melatonin and sleep on this podcast and you can go back and look to actually several different episodes looking at

the failed use of melatonin in healthy people to boost sleep but also some interesting data regarding the use of

melatonin as an antioxidant, a very effective antioxidant. And as I said the

first one of those episodes looking at melatonin and sleep and asking does it help people with

Improving their sleep or even people with insomnia and

Unfortunately the answer was no it's really not very effective in those specific circumstances.

Today, however, I want to discuss the use of melatonin in a very specific condition.

And what prompted me to investigate further is that for the condition that we're talking about today, based on some very recent

data that came to light, I got really interested in just sort of went down into a deep dive investigating this and all of the

nuanced mechanisms and biology I just thought actually it's a topic that I get asked

a lot about I know there is a huge need to discuss sleep within this condition specifically.

So I thought it would be time to do an updated podcast.

That condition that we're talking about today is autism spectrum disorder or

ASD and specifically I wanted to delve into a very recent intriguing meta-analysis.

And by the way, a meta-analysis,

as we've spoken about on this podcast before,

is just a fancy statistical scientific method where we gather together all of the individual studies that have been

published on a specific effect and we put them into a big statistical bucket and we look at the overall general effect as it were.

And this new study used this meta analysis approach and it investigated the use of

melatonin in treating sleep disorders among individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Just as a gentle reminder at the top of this episode, but it is a really important reminder.

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