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Comment by stereoabuse | Hacker News Reader

I only have anecdotal evidence. Long time depressive, combination of several SSRI and atypical antidepressants with cyclical efficacy, about 1 decade of varying treatment approaches. One weekend in summer 2016 was the changing point between "old very depressive me" and "new just regular depressive me" - involved intercontinental travel, zero sleep for somewhere 48+ hours, and some socialization and 'partying' in a culture new to me. My first response to feeling this change a couple days later after I had returned to my home country was too look up research on sleep deprivation's use in depression treatment. Was pleasantly surprised when there seems to be some marginal evidence for its efficacy. That being said, staying awake for that long was a misery in itself and I'm not looking to repeat that in the future so I'll stick to the couple pills I take in the morning to tame everything for now.

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I will say that the best sleep - the deepest and most satisfying sleep - it happens for me after staying awake for too long.

I suspect a good lifestyle for me would be to have 26 hour days.

I'm just like you. Left to my devices I will go to bed 2 hours later each day.

Taking sub-1mg doses of melatonin every night has helped me cope with a 24 hour day tremendously. Have you tried that?

Do you know anything about long-term consequences of taking melatonin supplements? I remember the results being inconclusive when I looked it up once.

I'm currently trying to get off melatonin and also get to a natural sleep cycle (meaning I won't have an alarm in the morning). But that usually means that I won't be able to fall asleep at night and I'll sleep forever in the morning if nothing external is waking me up. I'm not sure if I should continue or if I should just start taking melatonin again because it helps tremendously.

I don't have an answer for long-term melatonin unfortunately.

In most folks circadian rhythm is not exactly 24 but slightly more or less. In this case it is helpful to force the sync by getting exposure to sun light (or a source of similar quality) in the morning and religiously cut off exposure to light several hours before going to bed.

Ideally you completely filter out both blue and green wavelength (which trigger the suppression of melatonin) and keep overall levels low.

For more information see shift workers' strategies - they have to change their rhythm on a weekly basis.

Thanks for the insight!

I haven't found anything that would point to total safety or the opposite. Then again, there are plenty of studies on the dangers of sugar and I still eat a bit of chocolate every day. Same for red meat, plastics touching food, caffeine, beer, being slightly overweight, driving, not using sunscreen regularly, stress, lack of sleep.

Is the risk of taking a small amount of melatonin every day really something to worry about in the bigger picture, if it helps you and has a long history of being used for this purpose without problems?

Like lots of people here I just can't beat my tendencies to stay up late despite massively good sleep hygiene. I end up missing sleep, being cranky and depressive, and generally having a lower quality of life because I just don't feel like going to bed - and when I do make it to bed I ruminate for a long time before falling asleep. If no new information presents itself, I plan on keeping good habits and being on melatonin for the rest of my life.

Sounds reasonable. I'll try it a little bit longer without melatonin, but if the issues with falling asleep persist, I'll probably start taking small amounts of melatonin again. It definitely helped a ton with falling asleep over the past few years, but I'm actually not sure how much of that is placebo.

Melatonin does (reasonably) well against placebo in the time-to-sleep studies I've read. If you want to read up, Gwern has the most accessible collection out there:

https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

Thanks!

Congratulations on trying this.

It is worth mentioning that lifelong sleep deprivation is linked to different types of dementia in the elderly, so I’m not sure which is worse: persistent sleep problems or nightly hormone supplements.

Thanks. I feel lucky that my work is flexible enough so that I can do this without any issues. Especially now that everyone is working from home.

I'll give it a little while longer before reintroducing melatonin into it.

I’m the same but I’ve long suspected our bodies need more physical activity. Any day that I work hard in the woods or around my house, I sleep well.

It’s doubtful to me that pre-industrial folks had a ton of trouble going and staying to sleep.

And fwiw, “working out” helps, but isn’t the same as a day’s manual labor.

I should note that I often spend my days working construction and regularly average 3 hours of exercise per day. Doesn't help me that much. Big exception made for the first day spent surfing if I haven't surfed in a while, that knocks me out cold.

It makes sense to me that if we stimulate ourselves through sugar, caffeine, artificial light, information, worry etc that we can benefit from a mild depressive to balance the stimulus. The other option is a monk-like existence that I haven't been able to keep going for more than a few months at a time and wouldn't want to go back to.

Apart from taking vitamins irregularly I usually put my body in charge of generating the pharmaceuticals. :)

I'd ask you to consider that whenever you turn on a lightbulb or a computer screen you're already interfering with your body's agency over this particular chemical. Don't spend 10 hours every day outdoors? You are well out of natural parameters already.

it is possible: https://xkcd.com/320/

I know that exact feeling. In 2010 I went from pretty crippling depression to a higher-functioning (lol) depression/anhedonia. It involved a nonstop drive from eastern Washington to south Texas. Never thought about it but it might have been the sleep deprivation and adrenaline.

> involved intercontinental travel, zero sleep for somewhere 48+ hours, and some socialization and 'partying' in a culture new to me

Those are quite some experiences, each of which could have contributed to some form of recovery.

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