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Comment by daughart | Hacker News Reader

It would be great if this opened the door to sleep aids that activated the brain's natural sleep induction mechanisms, as opposed to today's sleep aids, which are basically just sedative/CNS depressant/muscle relaxers.

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Well, this is what melatonin does and its OTC. My horrible insomnia was cured not by Ambien, but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it.

Its also probably time we admitted human beings can't fit into lifestyles where they're bombareded with blue light, stress, etc right before bedtime. The Western lifestyle is fairly anti-traditional and old fashioned things like prayer/meditation/whatever before bed and calm family time of putting the children to bed or reading to them has been replaced with ipad usage/internet tomfoolery, or tv watching.

I doubt there will ever be a pill to fix this. If you're serious about fixing insomnia then you need to do the legwork of proper lifestyle change. Personally, the benefits I get from running flux on the desktop as well as daily meditation are incredible. Pharmacological solutions shouldn't be our first instinct.

FYI, I'm a chronic insomnia sufferer, and I also found melatonin was a "miracle cure". Even if/when it didn't help me get to sleep on time, I would still wake up feeling mostly rested and able to function the next day.

Flash forward a couple of years, and it started to catch up to me. In retrospect, I guess it was NOT working a lot more often than it WAS, but I was still able to get up at my normal time and slog through another day... until all of a sudden I wasn't.

I started having a really hard time concentrating, remembering things, etc. I went from being proud I had memorized the first 40 digits of pi, to not being able to remember my own damned zip code.

Frankly, I thought it was early onset Alzheimer's, and I started putting my affairs in order. Initial tests were inconclusive, but that's not necessarily surprising: the simple cognitive tests are only useful for spotting advanced decline if you are even remotely non- "neuro-typical". Fancier (and noisier) brain scans showed nothing unusual.

Anyway, long story short: on medical advice I threw away the melatonin, and practically overnight my symptoms evaporated.

This is all highly anecdotal, I know - and you would be foolish not to be skeptical. But I would suggest that if you are using melatonin regularly, and especially if you have been for a long time... You might want to casually start tracking your actual sleeping hours, and verify that you are really getting enough - and not just "compensating."

only thing that worked for me is counter intuitive 'sleep restriction'. Wake up earlier and earlier everyday until you naturally fall asleep at night. Hard part is waking yourself up in morning when you feel like sleeping more.

The problem with your "melatonin" suggestion is that there's no way to know how much melatonin you actually took, since there is no regulation on the chemical, and the "sleep pills" that are purchasable don't say on the label what concentration they're made at, and concentrations vary by brand, and could vary bottle to bottle (due to an inexact manufacturing technique, for example).

In several EU countries, you can buy melatonin pills made by an actual pharmaceutical companies (which also manufacture prescription drugs) OTC. You could order it online. Note there's a difference between unregulated supplement and an OTC drug.

Although I think your worry about quality excessive, it's not like making pills is rocket science. The supplement companies most likely get the powder in bulk from biochemical factories that also manufacture prescription drugs.

In the US, the supplement industry is much less regulated than the pharmaceutical industry.

The concern is not excessive, at least in the US. Consider https://consumerist.com/2016/07/27/anyone-can-make-market-a-... :

> While real drugs — prescription or over-the-counter — must demonstrate levels of safety and effectiveness before hitting store shelves, dietary supplements are effectively regulated like food products.

https://consumerist.com/2016/01/20/7-things-you-need-to-know... gives a summary of a Frontline episode on the topic; Frontline does documentaries on public affairs topics.

Or, from 2001, http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/73/6/1101.full - "All plant products were correctly identified by botanical plant species (ie, Panax species or E. senticosus); however, concentrations of marker compounds differed significantly from labeled amounts. There was also significant product-to-product variability: concentrations of ginsenosides varied by 15- and 36-fold in capsules and liquids, respectively, and concentrations of eleutherosides varied by 43- and 200-fold in capsules and liquids, respectively."

Or from the 1990s, http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0003/lmb.html :

> Analysis of 16 commercial DHEA products revealed that only half the products contained the amount of DHEA stated on the product label; content varied from 0 to 150% of the stated content (Parasrampuria et al., 1998).

> Melatonin supplements have failed to meet quality claims or delivery profiles stated on their labels (Hahm et al., 1999).

It lists others as well.

Mine was cured by establishing a consistent sleep schedule, a change in diet, and not doing anything interactive for at least an hour or so before bed (no programming, no video games, etc.).

I concur with several others on this thread that in my experience, after years of trying different things, the only thing that worked was consistently waking up early everyday (~6am).

I also read in bed until I'm sleepy (usually within 30 minutes). The common literature on this subject says not to do that so I avoided for a long time. But one day I decided to try and it worked!

http://www.consumerreports.org/vitamins-supplements/does-mel...

Note that this does not address quality of sleep or effect on circadian rhythm, both of which are the primary action of melatonin supplements.

Is there some study to indicate that it does?

> but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it

Does that require a prescription?

You can buy melatonin in a variety of doses over the counter. Its normally near the vitamins and supplements part of the store.

OTC melatonin has fairly unpredictable quality though. The amount of melatonin in the entire bottle might be correct, but the amount in each pill may vary wildly. You can get prescription melatonin that's actually controlled so each pill has the same amount in it.

Or you can get it in pure powder form and make your own dose (like http://www.powdercity.com/products/melatonin-powder )

Note higher dosing is NOT better...most OTC melatonin supplements give too much. 0.5 to 1.0 mg should be used 1-3 hours before bedtime.

1-3 hours? Do you have a source for that advice? Everything I've read, and my personal experience with it, suggests taking it (as you say, .5 to 1mg) 30 minutes before you want to fall asleep.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/melatonin/dosing...

http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/how-to-use-melatonin-correctly...

Number of hours are all over the map. Hey, if you feel its effects within 30 minutes, then that's what you should use...

Personally I take it 45 minutes before expected bedtime (irregularly, only if I feel I need it).

I use a liquid form of melatonin. A dropper is included in the one I use. I found I could measure my dose way more accurately than breaking tiny 3mg pills haphazardly.

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