Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

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I've personally experienced tremendous benefit in my sleep patterns from taking melatonin.

I did better with taking co-q-10 in the morning. For a long time, I couldn't tolerate melatonin. I would feel like I wasn't fully awake for up to three days after taking it. When my health improved enough that I could tolerate it, I still needed co-q-10 in the morning to feel fully awake.

Co-q-10 is the co-enzyme of melatonin and wakes your brain up in the morning. It is made in the body in a complex (17 step?) process. A bottleneck at any stage can leave you deficient, so many people are deficient. If you take co-q-10 in the morning, your body will produce a small melatonin spike about 12 or so hours later. If you take melatonin, it does not increase production of co-q-10. So taking co-q-10 can do a lot more in terms of healing both sides of waking/sleeping cycle of the brain chemistry. It is also gentler/subtler than melatonin.

Lots of people use melatonin to good effect, so I'm not trying to knock it. Just trying to expand on the topic of nutritional supplements and brain chemistry wrt the waking/sleeping cycle. Thanks for bringing this up. :-)

I have taken CO-Q10 for a period of 6 months several years ago. It is bit on the expensive side, as far supplements goes. I used to take it to help me stay alert. I didn't see any difference in my general alert level. I kept on taking it because I was under the impression it might take me longer than couple of months to see any improvements. I increased dose, changed brand; nothing happened.

Currently I am only taking Fish Oil (Omega 3&5) and St. John's Wort. Both helps me with my anxiety and sleep.

I used to stay awake for 24-36 hours at a time quite often with 12-16 hours sleep in between. Relied heavily on caffeine and my anxiety was off the roof. I completely stopped caffeine from my diet. Drink decaf. Tea. Exercise first thing in the morning to burn up most of my energy so that I get tired by the end of day and help me sleep. I still end up staying awake for ~20hrs a day, which is closer to my goal of ~16hrs and better than previous habit of staying awake for ~30hrs.

If you have problem sleeping, kill the caffeine and it will solve half of your problems.

I'm betting on a placebo effect of the melatonin. taken in pill form it is only effective for a few hours.

It's hardly a placebo effect if it has an effect for a few hours.

I've struggled with insomnia my whole life. If I'm able to fall asleep in the first place, I'm usually able to stay asleep long enough to get rested.

I only need the effect for about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. Long enough to fall asleep.

I think the comment refers to the placebo affect for "I would feel like I wasn't fully awake for up to three days after taking it."

Ah, right! Rereading the thread, that seems the more likely interpretation.

At the time, I was extremely ill and my brain chemistry was out of whack in a big way. It wasn't a placebo effect.

Some quick googling did not find anything about CoQ10 being related to melatonin. I'd be interested in learning more about this. Do you have any sources?

Unfortunately, no. A quick google isn't turning anything up for me either. I know this from talking to very knowledgeable people who did a lot of research for dealing with their own health problems. I have found such people to be the most reliable source for information on such things. I am quite surprised and rather chagrined that this information isn't readily available with a quick google. I will have to look into it some more some other time, when I have the time to do so. I try hard to find scientific stuff to back up what I understand to be true.

What happens if you use both melatonin & co-q-10?

Melatonin about 30 minutes before bedtime and co-q-10 in the morning worked well for me at one time, but only after I had already done some work on healing my body generally and brain chemistry along with it. I no longer routinely take either of them, which is a recent development. I still have co-q-10 in the house because until two or three weeks ago, I was still taking it about 5 mornings a week. I haven't had melatonin in the house recently.

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