Hacker News Reader

Comment by submeta | Hacker News Reader

Tangential: Have had sleep disorders my whole life. Until I read an article here about melatonin (an article that was about substances that have an effect on longevity). So I started taking melatonin every night, 0.5mg. I must say: Never had this kind of deep sleep. Over such a long period of weeks (since I started taking it). My Garmin watch has a sleep tracker. And it confirms that I get way more deep sleep.

View on HN

Two things:

1. Too much deep sleep might not be desirable.

2. Sleep staging by activity trackers is generally pretty inaccurate. Garmin is no exception.

Could you please elaborate on 1. ?

Different processes happen during different sleep stages. Typically people go from light sleep to deeper sleep stages (slow wave), to REM in a cyclical pattern. We go through each of the stages roughly every 90 minutes of "quality sleep". There's usually more deep sleep at the start of the night, and more REM towards the end of the night.

If you end up with too much deep sleep (e.g. after being very physically exhausted for a while), you will have little or no REM sleep and your sleep quality will suffer.

It's not just "too much deep sleep" that could fuck things up, being woken up multiple times can also mess up your sleep cycle, whether it's by crying children or sleep apnea.

Personally, I am very alert throughout the day if I sleep between 6-7 hours. Past the 7 hours threshold I am get into a worse headspace (brainfog) throughout the day proportionally to the amount of extera sleep.

Sleeping for longer than 8 hours frequently gives me hypnic headaches and terrible migraines.

I recently had a baby and the lack of sleep has reduced my headache frequency dramatically!

I am considering taking melatonin supplements. Could you recommend any? I wake up several times in the night.

I am in Germany, so I cannot recommend any. Just one without any supplements, just melatonin.

I wish dm stores were available internationally

My understanding is that melatonin helps you fall asleep, but doesn't help you stay asleep.

In general, I have no trouble falling asleep, but I typically wake up once or twice at night and am usually unable to sleep more than 5.5 hours. I've tried 3mg Melatonin tablets in Ecuador, and I've tried a couple of different brands of 10mg time-release Melatonin gummies from the US. None of them had any noticeable effect on me.

The only thing that has worked so far, is physical activity. We just moved to Europe, and the first two weeks was a lot of buying and building furniture, slept great those two weeks. Now that I'm back to my normal office worker life, my sleep has also gone back to not being great.

(I track my sleep using the AutoSleep app on iOS, wearing an Apple Watch at night)

Melatonin has a short half life (~1h), that's why melatonin receptor agonists [1] are a thing. So just mechanistically it's unlikely to help with sleep maintenance.

Do you wake up after 5.5h at a consistent time of the day and the first half of the night is peaceful? If you fall back asleep do you then wake again shortly after?

I mean waking in the night can be many things (apnea, etc), but you could very well have a rather advanced sleep phase.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin_receptor_agonist

I recently started exploring supplements. Turns out a lot of what you find in the likes of CVS and Whole Foods can be all over the map: from 0 of the actual ingredient to 10x what’s on the label. Current consensus on reputable brands seems to be Thorne, NOW, Life extensions, and Pure. The last one acquired by Nestle, make of that what you will.

My understanding has always been that you habituate to melatonin after a few days. Is this not true?

Not in my case. Never had this sleep quality. But maybe it's placebo after a few weeks? :)

FYI it's unlikely you will eventually develop a tolerance, but it's important to not increase dosage: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-mi...

The linked article doesn't mention tolerance at all? I don't believe there is any evidence out there to suggest that melatonin tolerance is a thing.

You're right! Edited the post...thanks for pointing this out was actually a mistake on my part the article was about incorrect dosage which was the point I wanted to make.

Ahh then yes that's a super valid point. I've seen shops sell 10mg per tablet. 0.5mg already does the trick for me.

I don't believe there is any evidence that you develop a tolerance. As a side note, Melatonin changed my life.

Melatonin does have the potential for augmentation, but it isn’t a certainty or even the majority of people.

Oddly, the result isn’t a loss of initial efficacy but instead a ‘wide awake at 3am’ situation.

The body will develop a tolerance (or the reverse, a sensitization reaction) to just about any substance that's taken regularly due to homeostasis. However, so long as you're taking a dose that nudges some physiologic signal/need in the right direction, your body's response to the substance will be minimal.

I'd be surprised if you can find anything this isn't true for.

A lack of studies on what the tolerance looks like for a particular substance does not imply that tolerance does not form.

In the case of melatonin: It's almost universally true that your sleep quality is worse than it was before once you stop taking it (for a few days at least). That's an indication that your body's equilibrium has changed from habitual use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com