Hacker News Reader

Comment by amaccuish | Hacker News Reader

Melatonin has genuinely changed my life in regards to sleep. I'd tried everything and for exams went on Zopiclone, and then found the gold that is Melatonin. Thoroughly recommend anyone with suitable problems sleeping giving it a go.

(I was DSPD, though every so often did the whole "Non-24-Hour-Sleep Disorder" thing)

View on HN

For me, it took a solid two weeks before I saw a regulation of my sleep pattern. Same time of day, 3 hours before I wanted to sleep, turning off all screens and eventually covering my eyes with a sleeping mask. Time released, low (correct) dosing too. Too much melatonin like pushes your brain past sleep.

The take-away from that sounds as if you found a sleeping-mask helpful, but there's not much evidence that melatonin had any effect.

> The take-away from that sounds as if you found a sleeping-mask helpful, but there's not much evidence that melatonin had any effect.

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.

The take away for me was that I have to let the melatonin work. It’s not a benzodiazepine. It won’t knock you out in 15 minutes like a benzodiazepine. But if you don’t counteract it with stimulants (and staring at a light is a stimulant) then it will work for you. It’s probably a lot healthier because of its subtlety too. At the time, I worked a late shift. That meant once I got home I went into dark out mode - to counteract all the stimulation from work. I didn’t absolutely have to do that for melatonin to work, but I was able to push up my sleeping time by doing that alongside melatonin. Ie melatonin works, but melatonin and other restful things I should otherwise be doing helped even more. Synergistically.

At the end of the day, you literally have to decide to end your day.

I was merely basing on the description as given. If there's more context, it wasn't really given.

How much do you take? I was regularly taking 3mg and 1.5mg regularly for most of the past 4 years. I recently tried 0.3mg (as recommended in another recent HN discussion about melatonin, I think it was a week or 2 ago), and I had terrible results.

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.

D3 should be taken for small periods. Note that these supplements, do not make up for self-produced substances.

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.

I don't exercise regularly, and I really should. My issue is I always feel too tired to exercise in the morning, and I feel like I have trouble falling asleep if I exercise in the evening. But I'm starting to think that exercising late isn't the problem now. I'll try what you recommend. It's really hard to abstain from screens, too. I'm definitely not doing that. I'll try doing nothing other than reading actual books ~2 hours before bed from now on.

If you don’t like Cardio like me I can’t recommend https://stronglifts.com enough. It’s been really fun slowly building up strength and I’m squatting 105kg now. Improves my mood and sleep no end.

Sooo doing some exercise 2 hours before sleeping and not spending my last waking hours on my laptop did it. I got more than 7 hours of sleep for sure, and...also woke up feeling very tired. I know I have a huge sleep deficit built up, so that's fine. I'm hoping I can sleep as much tonight as well.

Yes it is normal. Your muscles will need to cope with the demand for oxygen and more time to rest. You might also feel some pain from the lactic acid. Ideally, exercise should be progressive to avoid these situations, but overall it's a welcomed trade-off if you ask me.

Good luck with everything!

It's anecdotal, but D3 actually messes up my sleep and leads to the symptoms you're describing. I've read similar reports on reddit and forums.

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.

The article suggest the low dose but mid-day instead of right before bed.

I get the wake up reaction with any dose, unless I take it with other stuff that keeps me asleep. I have Non-24 and have tried a bunch of stuff and have found finding things to help stay asleep easier than finding stuff to help get to sleep, although nothing really works for very long at a time (and there is a huge amount of individual variation in what helps at all). If exercise works for you that would be best but for me it doesn't help.

I wrote a long post about stuff that helps me stay asleep a month ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384486

I also have N24 (I am sighted). 0.3mg 2 hours before the bedtime I wanted worked but would cause me to wake up in the middle of the night and sleep very long (about 13 hours). I'm testing 0.3mg 4 hours before bedtime and that's working so far.

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.

I'm fairly sure I tried somewhere around .3mg 4 hours before bed and it still woke me up (and I couldn't get back to sleep for hours). I just recently tried .3ish mg (scooped from powder this time so not very precise, next time I'll try the water mixing trick that someone here suggested) 7 hours before bed for five days and it still seemed to wake me up more than usual (but I also took other stuff with it and was able to get back to sleep quickly most of the time), although hard to tell for sure if it was the melatonin since it was only a few days. Which is a little strange since the half life is short enough that it should all be long gone by the time I actually get to bed. The melatonin did seem to help in some ways though, so I will try it again soon.

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.

Also, I do have concerns about the quality control and dosage accuracy of these supplements. There was a study that tested OTC melatonin products in Canada and found:

> 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).

Good point, that would certainly confuse the situation if there was a 5x variation. Even though they aren't treated the same as drugs there are still quailty standards in the US, although they don't seem to be enforced very well. I try to find suppliers that do better testing. If you have the money for FDA approved stuff you can get ramelteon or tasimelteon these days. But they are quite expensive. Although it looks like the ramelteon patent expires next year and there are a couple of approved generics already so prices should go down quickly next year:

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.

Made a world of difference to me over the last 3 years too, wish I'd learned about it sooner!

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com