If you’ve ever struggled with insomnia, you’ve likely heard of melatonin. This nutritional supplement has been widely available in drug stores, health food stores and grocery stores for years, and touted as a natural sleep aid. It even comes in doses meant for children.
But what is melatonin? And is it safe for cancer patients to take during treatment?
We checked in with pulmonologist Saadia Faiz, M.D., for answers....

Deciding where to receive treatment is one of the most critical decisions you can make when you receive a cancer diagnosis.
So, how...
The running joke in my family is that I’m always at the doctor’s office. I’ve never missed a checkup since I was in my early 20s. And I go...
Breasts come in all shapes and sizes, but did you know they can also vary in density? Breasts are composed of fat and glandular breast tissue, and the ratio of fat tissue to glandular breast tissue is what determines your breast density. Some women have less glandular breast tissue; this is referred to as not dense. Others have more glandular breast tissue, which means they have dense breast tissue.
When you have dense breast tissue...

If you’re newly diagnosed with cancer and preparing to start treatment, heart health might be the last thing on your mind. But it shouldn’...
Rhabdomyosarcoma is the most common soft tissue sarcoma in children and adolescents. This type of sarcoma grows in the muscles attached to...
In the 1950s, German biochemist Johanna Budwig developed a diet that she believed kept unhealthy cells from growing. Known as the Budwig diet...
Hairy cell leukemia is a rare blood cancer diagnosed in only about 1,000 people each year in the United States. Usually slow-growing, it’s...
Figuring out how to travel safely has never been more confusing — especially for cancer patients and their families.
Though...
At age 21, most people are still discovering who they are. But I was being treated at MD Anderson for osteochondroma-associated de-differentiated...
One of the earliest and most common side effects of pancreatic cancer is pain. The pancreas sits below your sternum in your mid-abdomen and...
I had symptoms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the spring of 2008, though I didn’t recognize them at the time. The first was a severe headache,...