Melatonin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
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- Used to have to sleep problems - mainly just my mind racing with all the (stress of) things I had to do. The symptoms were trouble sleeping and/or waking in the middle of the night with instant thoughts of projects, task lists.
- Melatonin didn't help me much. Maybe their effect was too subtle on me - maybe I was using the wrong dose as mentioned in the post.
- Magnesium Glycinate pills before sleep were a massive help in falling asleep and staying asleep. The only way I can describe its effects is helping me "control my brain waves". Sounds a bit non-technical but the effect is quite subtle . The idea to take these supplements were from previous discussions on HN.
- Recently got a newborn baby - first child. These things will do more to knock you sleep cycle out whack than anything else I've experienced. Coincidentally, falling asleep and staying asleep is easier than ever. You just end up getting woken up by a tiny crying human at seemingly random times.
I'm in my 30s and eat what many consider a very healthful diet - virtually no sugar, just veggies, high quality fats and proteins, and minimal fruit. I spend 7-9 hours in bed; yet wake up feeling exhausted every. single. day. I'd love to exercise, but I'm too continuously tired to get started.
Melatonin, when taken via dissolving sublingual tablet (1-3 mg), makes me feel a bit sleepier, but doesn't often keep me asleep through the night. When swallowed via a capsule, it makes me feel like I've been hit by a bus for the entirety of the next day, even if I slept the night before.
My own research led me to magnesium glycinate, which helped to some degree (maybe I wasn't taking enough?), but didn't solve the problem. My biggest trouble is falling asleep - I can be dead tired, but as soon as I'm in bed, my mind goes nuts, and I lie awake for hours. Then, by the time my body is in nice deep sleep, it's time to get up, and the deep sleep is disrupted.
I recently had an appointment with my physician (who practices integrative medicine and is not your typical MD), and he told me to try a relatively new formulation of magnesium called Magnesium L-Threonate, commercially known as Magtein.
It is apparently the best type of magnesium for crossing the blood-brain barrier, and thus, likely the best at addressing sleep issues.
I've been on it for about a week now (taking 1000mg 2 hours before bed and 1000mg upon waking in the morning), and have slept better in the last two nights than I have for a long time. Here's to hoping it keeps working!
I also use a couple other hacks to help me sleep - at night, about an hour after the sun sets, I wear "blue blocking" glasses (the UVEX S0360X fit nicely over my prescription glasses). Sounds (and looks) goofy, but for me it creates a noticeably stronger "sleep pressure" than I'd experience without them. I also wear a mask over my eyes when sleeping, to block out any ambient light, and I just started making an effort to listen to music while waiting to fall asleep. I think all of these things help to some degree.
Also, check out the book "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker.
Have you tried sleeping elsewhere? On a couch? What about sleeping in a semi-seated position? Would that work?
How's your weight? Does it go up or down?
Finally, if you are in bed for 30 minutes and you haven't fallen asleep, it's probably way better to either get up and do some stuff or to just accept that you won't be sleeping and just stay there and go through your imagination.
But for most people, a CPAP machine is a great solution. There are few other serious medical conditions that can be more thoroughly addressed!
If you might have it, you really should look into it, there is a good chance your life can be turned around and improved more than you (pun intended) could dream of. Mine was!
Modern CPAP machines are quiet, comfortable, and only cover your nostrils. And they can save your life!
The test is apparently easy and you can do it at home with a device you get from your doctor and wear overnight, and his machine fits in the palm of one hand is basically silent. Anyone who thinks this is a possibility for them, I agree with you, get checked!
My partner is non-24 and generally manages a "normal" schedule. However, she sometimes has to roll her sleep, where she'll go to bed an average of 1.5 hours later each day, until she's back to going to bed around 10.
When she is holding her sleep schedule steady she uses light goggles in the morning (literally goggles with bright reflected lights on them) and low-dose melatonin at night (can't remember the exact dose). She also watches her meal times relative to when she wants to go to sleep. I think these things would be useful for someone without the non-24 issues, but are good sleep hygiene things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF24xmJQK1k
Also, D3 and Magnesium work very well together. In fact, if you add more D3, it's going to use-up even more magnesium.
There is a negative correlation between RDA fruit consumption and diabetes.
Of course if you're drinking 2L of juice a day you're gonna have a problem, as you would going ham on any kind of food. (ANY)
If you eat the right meats, like liver, you get more vitamins and minerals then you would from fruit. So if you know what you are eating, it's fine to cut off fruit.
Note the operative modifier 'too much'
You can eat your recommended daily intake of fruit in one sitting with no other food and still remain below high GL levels.
Digestion is a complex process. Your model that anything containing fructose is bad is not supported by any data / analysis I am aware of, and contradicted by nearly all of it.
Mammals process most of thier fructose consumption in their small intestines. Only high doses that overload this capacity lead to harmful spillover to the liver etc.
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/105/6/1462/4569801
Fruit consumption is inversely correlated with all-cause mortality as best we can tell. Probably something to be said about people who eat fruits being among the more health minded individuals as well and skewing results but it’s probably not “unhealthy” to eat fruits.
https://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1703
People consuming fruit could be more healthy individuals in general, exercising and avoiding other types of food which might have more effect than consuming fruit. So be careful about drawing conclusions from correlations or epidemiological studies as you have to consider other possibilities.
>In persons undergoing mild sleep deprivation, 3g of glycine an hour prior to sleep is able to increase sleep quality and improve self-reports of fatigue and well being the next day due to better sleep.
I take approx. 10g of gelatin a day which also contains glycine, and I also notice improvements in my sleep.
I think it was .25 and .5 mg I tried -- half of the minimum dose that was available over the counter at that time. It was about 5 years ago, so don't remember too well.
Very low dosages seem to work best, according to the article... dosages lower than what is commonly sold. My anecdotal experience matches this recommendation.
NOW ZMA [1] has been my life saver for years. It never fails to make me enter "sleep mode". The same dose works now as has always worked. Do not take calcium supplements at the same time as ZMA.
My sleep cycle has been out of whack since 17 years old. I've learned the hard way - no school jobs, relationships, etc. that require early mornings.
I have been able to improve things with a half of dose of Ambien 2-3x a week. I've heard good reports from some of the newer patented drugs (Lunesta, I think) but they're still quite expensive.
Whenever I find my mind racing at night, it's because I haven't taken any "down time" during the day. Laying in bed at night is often the first moment of my entire day (other than taking a shower) where I have no external stimulation of work or entertainment.
Best of luck with everything though!
However, 10,000IU of vitamin D3 before 10am (see e.g. [0] for discussion and analysis that do NOT support my regime) seem to consistently give me a good reliable sleep schedule.
I was definitely not as thorough as Gwern, nor comparing to placebo - but for decades I have tried tens of different sleep aids, most of them useless, some working for a couple of weeks and then not, melatonin being inconsistent - with vitamin D feeling like a jackpot.
If you care to experiment, do your own reading on dosing - it should be adjusted down if you spend any time in the sun - but it should 25-50IU/lb of body weight, which is way higher than the FDA RDA. This is not medical advice. I am not a medical professional, nor do I play one on TV. YMMV. Proceed at your own risk.
I think an important thing to consider is that if your going to take large amounts of vitamin D, you should also be getting enough magnesium to prevent unhealthy calcification.
In the winter, I've taken one time doses of ~40,000 IU every few weeks or so, (always in the morning of course). I remember reading that 40,000 IU every single day for more than 3 months was what it would take for many people to develop hypercalcemia. Because vitamin D is fat soluble, that made me feel pretty safe taking a large mega dose from time to time. The effects of a large megadose are emotionally palpable.
But I will say that the magnesium also seems important. I have a sensitive ankle that was once run over by a taxi and got badly sprained. Last winter, I started taking daily vitamin D without magnesium, and was probably doing about 10,000 IU/day. After a week or so, I noticed that my ankle was acting up more than usual. I took an epsom salt bath (magnesium sulfate) and it helped immediately.
(https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/am-i-getting...)
You should be taking vitamin K as well.
If I take it when traveling, jet lag is greatly diminished and overcome much more rapidly. I switch to taking it 9 a.m. of the destination's local time. If 9 a.m. occurs during the flight, I take it then.
It's like an external clock pulse!
The first time I took 5000 D3, I made the mistake of doing it in the evening. My sleep that very night was quite strange, disturbed with weird dreams. I immediately clued in to the fact that morning might be better. Basically, mimicking the onset of daylight.
D3 is beneficial for exercise; it relieves that muscle soreness and tiredness and improves mental alertness. It helps beat those winter blues and gets you out there.
http://ctheblog.cforyourself.com/2008/12/overdosing-on-vitam...
When I get those teeth sensations, I back off the D3.
That blogger's experience with waking up early in the morning between 5-6 exactly matches mine, also.
Is this a daily dose of D3 of 10,000 IU? And for how long have you been taking it?
50,000 daily for a month is toxic, though afaik 20,000 has no “period of time it becomes toxic”; however, D is fat Soluable, so I take breaks to make sure my body can get rid of any excess.
I have never thought about the calcification angle that you mentioned in another thread, I'm just constantly experimenting since my teens, and keeping the things that seem to improve my well being (with the occasional breaks to guarantee I'm not overdosing/accumulating, and also to see that it still helps).
How much magnesium do you add to your D3?
(and, if anyone is going to try magnesium citrate or magnesium oxide as a result of this post - I highly recommend building up your dose from very little, and doing that on days where you have easy access to a bathroom - in the beginning, bioavailability is low, but it does relax your bowel muscles ... and even after your bioavailability rises, will happen with excess amounts)
(I was DSPD, though every so often did the whole "Non-24-Hour-Sleep Disorder" thing)
How can you reasonably conclude anything from your position, having only read that short comment? They have all the context and data and came to their conclusion. It might or might not be correct, but you're in no place to refute them on the topic of what has helped them personally.
At the end of the day, you literally have to decide to end your day.
On 1.5mg and 3mg, I would have very unsettling and memorable dreams, as well as wake up very tired, but I would get at least 7 hours of sleep on most nights. With 0.3mg, I woke after only 3 hours of sleep, feeling very energized but then getting very, very tired by early afternoon. I would fall asleep between 10 PM and midnight, wake up three hours later, then be unable to fall back asleep before it's time to go to work.
This meant I had to use stimulants to be functional, and I entered a cycle of not being able to sleep through the night, having to use stims in the morning, having to use melatonin at night to fall asleep, waking up after 3-4 hours, repeat. I finally broke it this past week by taking a sick day and sleeping through most of it, but I still couldn't hit 7 consecutive hours.
I can't even remember the last time I got the recommended minimum of 8 hours, regardless of what I do. I am trying ashwagandha and ZMA together for the first time tonight, having just taken both about an hour ago. I also took D3 this morning which will hopefully help too.
I think I'm done with melatonin for now, since I saw recommendations to abstain for a week or 2 to reset, and then trying again at the smaller dosage. But if this works, I probably won't use it again.
I wrote a long post about stuff that helps me stay asleep a month ago:
The normal instructions for using melatonin as a sleep aid are to take it a short time before going to bed. It appears that at least some N24 sufferers have a different reaction to it and need to be dosed several hours earlier, contrary to the normal instructions.
If you haven't seen it, there is a circadian rhythm disorders patient advocacy group, email discussion list (not just for memebers), and survey (also not just for members) at: https://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/
There are quite a few people with Non-24 on the list.
> Results show that melatonin content did not meet within a 10-percent margin of the label claim in more than 71 percent of supplements, with the actual content ranging from 83 percent less to 478 percent more than the concentration declared on the label. The study also found that lot-to-lot variability within a particular product varied by as much as 465 percent.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170214162728.h...
There is no reason to believe the situation is different in the US where supplements are not regulated like drugs (thanks, Orrin Hatch).
https://www.drugs.com/availability/generic-rozerem.html
I got 1g pure melatonin powder from a now gone supplier that did good quailty testing. It takes me several tries to get something that looks like about .3mg since it is such a tiny amount and I'm sure there is quite a bit of variation, but I'm fairly sure I at least get < .5mg each time.
Try to lay off D3, and try to take more magnesium citrate separately, this helped me.
Apparently, half-life of D3 is about 3 weeks, so if you've been taking it for awhile, you can have a lot of it in your body all the time. I'm not a scientist, but my best guess is that since D3 is meant to be released under sunlight, too much of it could be doing something to interfere with your sleep.
Again, just a layman's guess, but true in my personal experience.
I would like to ask you if instead of using melatonin to enhance your sleep, did you try physical exercise. If your body is physically tired and you abstain from screens (iPads, iPhones, etc.) for 2h before sleeping, you should be able to get a decent amount of sleep.
Additionally, sleep quality doesn’t translate in hours. You could have a 5-hours sleep, where you reach the REM phase vs a 7-hour sleep where you don’t.
Good luck with everything!
0.5mg is the dose I found best - take it most nights but I'm currently enjoying a few weeks where I've not had to take any.
His interview on Joe Rogan is a good summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig
He covers everything from why we sleep (obv), naps, melatonin, etc. I've just finished it and really enjoyed it.
Somewhat tangetial, check out "The Circadian Code" as well - a lot of more practical advice in this one. They actually disagree on couple of delicate points, so not sure how can one make up one's mind as to which one's correct (e.g. one thinks there are night owls , one thinks it's a myth; one thinks we need 7 hours of sleep, one thinks that less than 8+ hours of sleep is devastating).
But in general, the message is the same - sleep well, try to fit into your circadian rhythm because all organs have internal clocks and being in rhythm benefits them all; some of them are interconnected, some are dependent on SCN, etc
In particular, the clinical trials with TRE (Time-Restricted eating, as in putting all calories in 8-12 hour intervals daily) seem amazing. Not a single side-effect, and all health markers seem to be improving under it.
One important study on mice concluded that mice that ate their high-fat, high-sugar food in 8 hour intervals (lets say, 8AM -> 4PM) compared to the control group of regular mice that had high-fat, high-sugar food all the time, ate more or less the same amount of calories daily, but the TRE-group had no increase of blood sugar or body fat.
Seems too good to be true, but apparently the study has been replicated..
I felt best running in the evening a little before sunset, getting back and eating within 6 hours, and going to bed around 2-3AM.
I had to change my schedule because we have bad Ozone problems in Phoenix AZ, so O3 around sunset was terribad — not worth running (if it was for health, anyhow).
Which book do you recommend? I feel like I'm fighting my body; since I began "waking" at 4AM (I think I'm already kinda awake) I can't sleep for more than 1-2 hours and get tired around 2PM. If I fall asleep at 2PM then I REALLY sleep, for many hours, and wake around 8PM.
Its a total mess.
I'm doing everything I know how: be in the sun early, melatonin, activity early, calories early, TRE, avoid blue light before bed, but my body still seems to reject the early bird protocol.
I've only got my experience with sleep deprivation and the methods I use to fix it. I had severe sleep deprivation and now I sleep 8 hours on average, with quality sleep.
I am a very light sleeper, on top of having problems falling asleep. This is what I did:
1) limiting the noise - I installed new windows and added new door that leads to my bedroom; I have a fan that I put next to me, put it on the highest speed and it absorbs any noise left. You can achieve this with a "white noise app", too.
2) completely dark room - I cover the windows outside, and then inside too (just in case any light escapes).
3) I fit my meals within 8 or 9 window as a part of TRE (Time-Restricted Eating) - my first meal is around 9AM. It does not have to be perfectly accurate (8:45, 9:15 acceptable)
4) strength training every day (assuming you are cardiovascularly fit); I do sprints as well (twice a week or so)
5) zero alcohol - it is one of the strongest REM suppressors
6) zero caffeine - very important. The average half-life of caffeine is 6 hours. That means that after 6 hours, you still have 50% caffeine in your body.
7) write down the following, and try to look at them from time to time: when you eat, what you eat, calories/macros breakdown, when you go to bed, when you fall asleep (approximately), when you wake-up, and a summary of the previous afternoon and night time - what you think is the reason for the sleep (or lack of) on the day of
8) try to fit in with your circadian rhythm. On average: we are at our peak 10AM-3PM - try to fit strenuous activities in this period (including heavy strength training - since I am a remote developer, I can do this).
9) I walk around 8-10 km every day, part of it in the morning, part of it around 20:00
10) try to limit blue light at night - some ideas: dim lights, orange/red glasses filter, orange/red light bulbs.
----- These were the major things that I did, and some combination of them seem to work. I don't know which ones precisely. Some things that didn't work for me:
1) some natural remedies like valerian tea, etc. - it made me worse, actually. 2) meditation - just doesn't work (for me). A lot of people swear by it.. 3) nothing of this sort: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/fall-asleep-fast/
Try to learn something from what you eat - but be brutally honest with yourself and write down everything that contains calories that you eat. I noticed that I sleep worse on the day I eat more sugars (and I hardly eat sugar at all!).
Hope this helps someone.. I know how hard it is without sleep.
There is some evidence that for humans eating all calories within 4 hour window might have similar effects.
I've always believed in the law of thermodynamics myself - counting just the calories, but I keep an open mind for now until someone can refute it. The blood sugar thing makes sense to me with what I know about melatonin suppressing the insulin - that's a fact. But the rest of the conclusion.. who knows.
Counting just the calories ignores second order effect, and diet is all about second order effects.
If one could absolutely stick to counting the calories and eating the specified amount, of course one would lose weight.
But e.g. a diet of only having 1500 calories of broccoli for 1 year, and one would be ill from lack of tons of nutrients and vitamins (and they'd have stopped much earlier anyway).
E.g. if one eats certain kinds of foods, your appetite increases and it's more likely to overeat. Not giving one's self some foods they like, also makes it easier and more tempting to break a diet. And lots of other factors (exercise, hydration, nutrition, and so on) unrelated with counting calories, that still affect what we eat and how we process it.
Any disparity is just on this single sentence: "your appetite increases" (as opposed to "their" or "one's").
"Their" as used across the comment is not meant as the plural possessive. It's instead used as a gender-neutral pronoun (a common use) to avoid repeating "one's" or using "his/hers".
It, in "your appetite increases and it's more likely to overeat" etc., refers to the situation/possibility (as in "If they sky's cloudy it's more likely to rain"). It is normal to use different pronouns to refer to different entities.
Finally, the "we" at the end is perfectly fitting. It's a generalization, beyond what each individual does.
Though "they" was used as a gender neutral pronoun -- not to change the subject from "one" to some group. E.g. as in: "if one drinks milk, their bones would benefit".
> It's not a good sign when a guest appears on his show
Why does this matter? I find this line of reasoning corrosive and hypo-critical. Each guest should be judged on the basis of their merits, character, not who they choose to have a conversation with.
edit: I get that he makes fun of him in later episodes, but that's only gonna pop up if you're watching youtube. for people listening on a podcast app, or with adblocking, or whatever else, they don't see the disclaimers. he's not a journalist and is rarely informed enough to challenge his guests, which totally counteracts his "open-minded" reason for having alt-right, pseudo-scienctific, snake oil salesmen, and bigoted people on his show. he's a dunce for giving his platform over to such obvious hucksters so often, which is only bolstered every time eddie bravo comes on (an idiot if there ever was one).
>The consensus stresses that melatonin is a very weak hypnotic. The Buscemi meta-analysis cites this as their reason for declaring negative results despite a statistically significant effect – the supplement only made people get to sleep about ten minutes faster. “Ten minutes” sounds pretty pathetic, but we need to think of this in context. Even the strongest sleep medications, like Ambien, only show up in studies as getting you to sleep ten or twenty minutes faster; this New York Times article says that “viewed as a group, [newer sleeping pills like Ambien, Lunesta, and Sonata] reduced the average time to go to sleep 12.8 minutes compared with fake pills, and increased total sleep time 11.4 minutes.” I don’t know of any statistically-principled comparison between melatonin and Ambien, but the difference is hardly (pun not intended) day and night.
>Rather than say “melatonin is crap”, I would argue that all sleeping pills have measurable effects that vastly underperform their subjective effects. The linked article speculates on one reason this might be: people have low awareness around the time they get to sleep, and a lot of people’s perception of whether they’re insomniac or not is more anxiety (or sometimes literally dream) than reality. This is possible, but I also think of this in terms of antidepressant studies, which find similarly weak objective effects despite patients (and doctors) who swear by them and say they changed their lives. If I had to guess, I would say that the studies include an awkward combination of sick and less-sick people and confuse responders and non-responders. Maybe this is special pleading. I don’t know. But if you think any sleeping pill works well, melatonin doesn’t necessarily work much worse than that.
The evidence says that it's a very weak hypnotic. The writer then makes a long, pseudoscientific argument against the evidence, while making a claim that their article is scientific, even though it wasn't peer reviewed. They make a cherry-picked comparison to Ambien, Lunesta and Sonata based on an article by non-scientific newspaper New York Times to bolster their claims; they ignore the ability of other, more potent hypnotics to improve time to sleep and sleep length in mental illness-caused insomnia -- on whom melatonin may be ineffective -- and in people with different causes for their sleep disorders.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the other flaws in the article.
The article butchers the role of intracellular adenosine increases. It would be fairly easy to describe the full mechanism but instead says that Adenosine is made whilst awake and cleared while asleep which is a gross oversimplification and actually pretty scientifically inaccurate.
It further describes UpToDate as 'the gold standard research database' - UpToDate is nothing of the sort - it is a authoritative clinical reference. Think Economist for medicine, except each article is about a condition, diagnosis or treatment and it is updated. But like all clinical references that are produced by humans, it has biases specific to the authors, their clinical practices etc
I'll take twice. With the flights I take this usually works out to before sleeping on the plane (which ideally is the same/close to bed-time at the destination). And then the first night at the destination.
In combination with other tricks -- I've found it really effective.
If anything, I find going the other way harder now as I have little energy until midweek.
- I try to arrive in the AM, stay up all day, and walk around as much as possible. Ideally walk in the sun. By the end of the day I'm shattered and usually will sleep well. Often I'm traveling for work, so I'll head direct to the office and work to keep busy. That first day can be tough, but after a couple of dips you can power though. After that you're pretty well set.
- I never nap (or even lie down) during the first day, that's always the thing that throws me off.
- For the flight: I have earplugs, noise cancelling headphones, and a heavy-duty eye mask. On occasion I'll play something calm on the headphones, but often it's just unplugged.
- I have one of these weird neck pillows - https://trtltravel.com/products/trtl-travel-pillow - works well for me as it stabilizes the head. If find the actual "pillows" don't really work.
- I try to eat in (or close to) the target time-zone a day before. On the plane I'll eat for sure, but veer to something light. I find the full meals make me lethargic the next day. Definitely eat at the "right times" when you arrive.
- I drink plenty of water, but I don't go crazy - I used to drink too much and my bladder would wake me up. I'll usually work out how much I want to/should drink (e.g.. two bottles) and then ration over the flight.
- I do have a small wine and sleeping tablets on the plane. Realize that's not for everyone, however (and probably unwise for some). But seems to work for me.
- ban alcohol altogether the day of the flight an possibly one day before and one after
- order a special vegan meal during the flight, even if you’re not vegan. They’ll serve you first and you’ll have more time to organize your sleeping schedule on board, plus you’ll stay more hydrated as the meal will usually include more veggies. - stay hydrated constantly, I’d dare say even over hydrated
On BA for instance, if you're in premium economy or higher as long as you order your meal via their portal a few days before the flight they'll serve you first before offering what's left to everyone else.
1. if i arrive early in the day, make sure i take as much coffee and/or energy drinks as possible to stay awake. then stop about 4 hours before planned bedtime.
2. once it's bedtime, or if i arrive at destination close to bedtime, if possible, i then smoke as much cannabis as is necessary to force me to go to sleep.
whenever i travel somewhere with vastly different timezones, i do this two or three days in a row and i'm usually fixed.
In my area they cost $2.99 for a bottle, far below the cost of other brands, and the dosage per tablet is 0.5mg or 500mcg which for me is pretty optimal.
EDIT: corrected units.
I hope you mean 0.5 mg not 0.5g because that would be a very big dose!
> There have been few studies on sighted young people. One finds that 1 mg works but 0.3 mg doesn’t; this study is an outlier. Another study on 25yo found both to work equally. Another study on 22-24yo found that 0.3 mg worked better than 1.0. UpToDate and Mayo Clinic suggests using at most .5mg. John Hopkins’ experts almost agree: they say “less is more” but recommend 1-3 mg.
I wonder if I should actually start cutting my pills in 20ths now... The author goes on to say he personally thinks that .3mg is a good amount and anything beyond 1mg is too much.
Edit: Sorry for the edits, I read the article after I made my comment, then figured I'd share their answer since I asked the question myself.
That's one of the key points of the article:
> “But my local drugstore sells 10 mg pills! When I asked if they had anything lower, they looked through their stockroom and were eventually able to find 3 mg pills! And you’re saying the correct dose is a third of a milligram?!”
> Yes. Most existing melatonin tablets are around ten to thirty times the correct dose.
Melatonin has a U shaped dose curve so you either need a tiny bit or a whole lot to be effective.
500ug leaves me groggy in the morning, 250 is perfect.
If you don't want to buy from some online nootropics store just to get a 300µg dose, check your local drugstore or vitamin store for liquid melatonin, and read the label and see how much each dropper is.
I just took a ~half-dropper with a glass of water because I'm still up. Good night!
If the melatonin is in pressed-pill form, rather than splitting it, you can just crush it in a mortar, then mix it with more filler (look at which one they’re already using on the bottle and use some of that; they’re usually using the cheapest thing that works.) Then you can simply measure out powder for a dose (rather than measuring out liquid).
If you want to go the extra mile, you can add enough filler to the mixture to fill a grid of gelatin half-capsules, such that you don’t have to worry about measuring doses.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17172005/
It's also protective against hypercalcemia, so if you're taking vitamin D, make sure you're getting enough magnesium.
I've even read that magnesium alone can mitigate the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency.
I couldn't find an explanation why they'd be sold at this dose from this article, which makes me suspicious of this. Am I missing something? What would be the motive for this?
In summary: "Commenters, including a patent lawyer, have filled in the rest of the story. Because melatonin is a natural hormone and not an invention, patents can only cover specific uses of it. The MIT patent covered the proper way to use it for sleep; a broader patent might not have been granted. The patent probably guided supplement companies, but expired about five years ago. It’s now legal to produce melatonin 0.3 mg pills, but people are so used to higher doses that few people do."
In fact I've tried to do some research but failed to find any information about undesirable effects and DON'Ts of melatonin at the time when I've started taking it (some years ago). It seemed a wonder drug everybody should be taking all the time - it just makes you sleep well whenever you choose to, protects from oxidative stress, boosts your immunity etc. But now I know: tolerance (including tolerance to endogenic melatonin which means screwing your natural circadian system) is what you pay (I could find not a single mention of melatonin tolerance until today).
Now I can wake up around 630 am, lift weights, do HIIT, and be early to work
Melatonin wakes me up in the middle of the night. I take Unisom (Doxylamine) as well. Works pretty well in combination
I have blackout curtains but I need some light to wake me up in the am, so I leave them open about six inches on one side
I eat a small organic meal for dinner, early as I can, usually by 630
As best I can tell it's not recommended for long term use because it hasn't been studied for that purpose and because there are prescription sleep aids that don't cause as much drowsiness
I'm terrified of taking a prescription sleep aid because of all the sleepwalking horror stories.
I take only 5 mg so the drowsiness isn't that big of a problem for me especially if I exercise in the morning. I'll take drowsy and rested over alert and unrested any day.
Getting up by yourself instead of being jolted out of sleep is invaluable, especially if you do rest all the time you need.
In the summer, though, sun is up at 4:30. I don't know how folks sleep too late. Even when exhausted, sleeping past 7 is near impossible.
I worked at a pharmacy for years before moving overseas. I'm not a pharmacist, but overheard pharmacist-customer advice for melatonin many times. While melatonin is one of the safer sleep aids, the pharmacists would always warn to take the lowest dose possible, and only take it while needed without a doctor's oversight because of the threat of decreasing natural melatonin production. It causes a sort of dependency on the supplement. It always seemed occasional use was OK, and generally safer than some of the alternatives.
I think these risks are why the supplement is a prescription here (Norway), and I fully agree with this.
It can still be better than the dependency on other sleep aids and have fewer side effects, though.
There isn't long-term effect after 6 months (I think) of any sleep medicine, according to certain studies. The effect literally "wears off", despite the subjective notion of the user.
Is there a recommendable online option with international delivery?
(I don't consider the usual 'online pharmacies' recommendable. Even when buying Melatonin in a store in the US, there's still the issue that Melatonin manufacturers and sellers mostly control themselves …)
The products I ordered definitely work so I think I trust them.
They even have the more questionable supplements such as Phenibut.
They ship this to Denmark at least, though it's possible some products are not shippable to some countries if there are stricter local laws.
It all disappeared for a while but there's sellers offering it again now.
Or the fact it also appears to have an effect on mesenchymal stem cells. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-079X.... https://stemcellsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10... https://stemcellsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10...
Perhaps this is why its called Beauty Sleep?
I also wonder what effect on the sleep pattern these above affects have in the big picture of sleep?
Best sleep I have had in adulthood was water only fasting for 18days recently. The body seems to know what to do to repair itself, perhaps because ever cell has a copy of our DNA in it. There seems to be some knowledge in this DNA that makes cells know what to be and how to perform its individual cellular role for the bigger picture of being part of a body, a bit like individual humans playing their part in a society.
About a week before a long flight I decided to test Melatonin and took a single 3mg tablet (smallest dosage I could find at my local pharmacy) before I went to bed. My sleep quality seemed unchanged but right after breakfast the next day I had gastro issues.
I tried a 3 mg tablet again a few days later and had the same symptoms.
I gave up on Melatonin deciding it was better to be wide awake over the Pacific than stuck in a tiny airplane bathroom :)
YMMV but other folks online have had similar side effects. It seems a small % of people have gastro issues but if you're considering Melatonin I suggest a small dosage first (maybe 0.3mg as recommended by the article) and a test _before_ travelling!
I take 0.5mg/night one hour before bed and it helps calm my mind and get right to sleep. It also helps me with my reflux!
See section 9.
source?
I used to work nightshifts with mostly light-blocking shades, and the only natural sunlight was the light that came in from the small gap above the room partition (I lived in a flex room/living room). That set-up was the worst.
I've had various life variables and combinations of them, but aside from the night-shift one, and obvious ones like constant sleep deprivation, it does seem like sunlight is playing the next-most significant role in helping to regulate my body and sleep.
It has become a crutch for me, sometimes I do worry if I have become too dependent on that arrangement, but it works well. In summer the headband can get hot though.
Otherwise it's just an unsubstantiated knee-jerk reaction at the top of the discussion.
I take melatonin once a week or so but haven't noticed any detrimental effects, so I do have a stick in the game and would like to know about potential issues if anything is out there.
So its available for prescription for short-term treatment of sleep disordersm, with provisos such as:
"Melatonin’s metabolism is mainly mediated via CYP1A enzymes. Therefore interactions may occur between melatonin and other drugs affecting or metabolised by CYP1A enzymes e.g. fluvoxamine, cimetidine, ciprofloxacin and other quinolones, carbamazepine, omeprazole, oestrogens (oral contraceptives and HRT), rifampicin, theophylline and increase in blood pressure with nifedipine and reduced prothrombin with warfarin have been reported." etc.
In this case the author seems to be a psychiatrist so he should be trustworthy: http://slatestarcodex.com/about/
I notice when I do everything right I don't have a problem waking up before 8 hours. Normally I shoot for 8:30 and have trouble going to sleep and getting up. Also when I am in a good sleep schedule I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, use the restroom, meditate if I'm awake enough, then go back to sleep.
I am sad to say that with most of the other factors controlled, bright screens are the likely cause of my sleep issues. This is hard for me because screen is life.
I find that a pretty depressing thing to read.
Here is what works for me:
1. Reduce room temperature to 25*C. Go to bed at 10:30pm
2. Automatically shutdown the airconditioner at 4:30am.
3. Jump out of bed at 5am without any alarm clock.
This habit continues in the month when no airconditioner is needed.
Also, the earlier submission didn't get a lot of comments (7) or votes, so a second run is probably OK by the guidelines.
Drinking two Rolling Rocks or PBR distilleries is more effective;
This suggests to me you are long term dream deprived for some reason, whether due to sleep deprivation or drug use, whether "recreational" or prescription. Anytime you start sleeping better/deeper/more after a long period of sleep deprivation or use of substances that suppress dream function, you have very vivid dreams for a time. This is unavoidable.
Alcohol suppresses dreams. So do many other things.
In California, a heavy indica is a recommended by doctors for sleep. My understanding is that it only affects R.E.M. sleeep.
Anecdotally, I track my sleep and when I smoked a heavy indica before bed I would consistently get at high 80 to 90% sleep quality. I'm on a couple of month tolerance break and have a hard time breaking 80% sleep quality.
I recently came accross Babson et al. 2017 Cannabis, Cannabinoids, and Sleep: a Review of the Literature:
http://www.med.upenn.edu/cbti/assets/user-content/documents/...
There hasn't been that much research (and most is on synthetic cb1 and cb2 agonists, not cannabis, and is short term). cb1 and cb2 receptors have different effects, and the dose (especially CBD) and length of use may both make a large difference. IIRC (and maybe not from this particular review) there is evidence that the same receptors may have opposite effects in different parts of the brain. cb1 receptors have a major role in circadian rhythm.
Some studies have shown increased slow wave sleep at least at first, but long term use and withdrawal may have the same issues as GABA-A agonists. Your current issues may be withdrawal effects or due to it helping or both.
Interestingly, the common anesthetic propofol inhibits an enzyme (FAAH) that breaks down the endocannabinoid anandamide. It might work well to combine endocannabinoid enhancers with other sleep aids (maybe melatonin), however research on those seems aimed at pain relief and hasn't worked out so there don't seem to be any good ones generally available. Pfizer did a Stage 1 sleep trial of the FAAH1 inhibitor PF-04457845 (by itself), but only to make sure it was passing the blood brain barrier. They didn't publish the results but it sounds like they found at least slightly reduced REM sleep (I'm not sure if there was increased deep sleep).
Some people have tried oleamide for sleep and it is a cb1 receptor agonist (among many other things including some kind of GABA effect). It sounds like it naturally accumulates during sleep deprevation. Looking online I have mostly found people reporting no effect, although I did see one person with primary insomnia who found it very helpful when cannabis wasn't. One person reported feeling tired and dizy all the time after a few weeks of use (resolving when they stopped) and the person who found it helpful said it felt like it wasn't a good thing to take every day. It is worth noting that it may have a fairly significant and direct dopamine system effect (vs indirect effect of cannabis) and that is one of the most fragile parts of the brain.
Joe Rogan - Effects of Alcohol and Marijuana on Sleep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNxk8W10wtY
I agree that sleep on THC is far better than no sleep at all, but for me, it became a crutch. I couldn't sleep without it. It was hell for traveling.