In your experience, does melatonin start helping you sleep from the first time you take it, or does it take a few days or weeks to kick in?
For the past few months, I’ve had trouble sleeping through the night. I usually go to bed around 10:30, and I can fall asleep within minutes of hitting the pillow, but then I wake up around 4:00ish and toss and turn and sometimes can’t sleep at all until my alarm at 6:30. Needless to say, ~6 hours of sleep isn’t cutting it for me. I have no real stress (my job is very low-key, I have no relationship problems at the moment, etc.), my health is good, and my sleep environment is the same as ever, so I don’t know what my problem is.
So I decided I’d try melatonin. Last night I took my first dose, 3 mg, a few minutes before bedtime. Well, I couldn’t fall asleep for maybe an hour (a new problem), and then I woke up at 3:30 and couldn’t fall back to sleep (the same problem but worse).
Is 3 mg too low a dose? Or, alternately, I’ve read people’s accounts saying they do better at a lower dose than 3 mg – should I try halving the tablets?
What have your experiences been, in terms of the time frame of melatonin’s effectiveness? (If you want to share the freaky dreams it’s given you, that’s great, but I don’t care about side effects at this point – I just want to know when I can expect to sleep through the night.)
I take 3mg about 1.5 hours before bedtime along with two capsules of Valerian root. By bedtime I’m yawning and sleepy. The melatonin had an effect within a couple of days but I think the Valerian root took a few weeks to really kick in.
As soon as my current bottle runs out, I’m going to start taking the sustained release version of melatonin as I often wake up between 4-5 AM and sometimes can’t fall back asleep for 30-60 minutes. There’s also the sub lingual melatonin that you dissolve under your tongue. You might want to try that if you want to take it right before bedtime. I had to play around with the timing of the melatonin to find the optimal window for sleepiness. Too early and I would wake up at 3 AM; too late and I was still sleepy the next morning.
The melatonin also gave me a “hangover” feeling for a few days until I got used to it. Taking it a bit earlier in the evening seemed to help a lot. Hopefully the sustained release capsules don’t cause a recurrence. Good luck, hope you find a solution. Sleep problems are no fun a’tall.
IANADoctor - that said: Waaay too low a dose. Is 3mg 1 pill? I have forgotten. I use it all the time when I cannot sleep, and it works wonders from the first time I take it. However, I am a 225 pound man and usually take 3-5 pills depending no the night. More mg’s the more you will sleep…IIRC it is impossible to over dose on melatonin.
In looking at the interwebs on melatonin dosage, it looks like you need to experiment with the right dose for you – the right dose to keep you asleep all night.
Melatonin is historically used for jet lag and for getting your circadian rhythm down so you are sleepy at the right times. I’d try a higher dose tonight, maybe double it until you feel it is the right dose.
I find that melatonin usually works from the first day, but it helps you fall asleep. I don’t think it does anything to keep you asleep. I’d never heard of an extended-release version, so I may try that. Currently I take 2 3-mg melationin and 1/2 an Ambien.
I found the extended-release version at the Vitamin Shoppe. The sustained release bottle looks identical to the regular bottle except for some teeny-tiny blue text, so it’s easy to miss.
Oh, and I’ve also found that there is definitely a window for falling asleep with melatonin. If you stay up too long, you’ll miss the boat. I go to bed no later than 30 minutes of the first yawn.
Because you have problems staying asleep rather than falling asleep, I’ll add this in here - serotonin is the chemical that keeps you asleep, and any light in your bedroom at all can interfere with its action. I keep my bedside alarm clock covered up at night, and keep the room as dark as I possibly can. You could even look into a sleep mask to cover your eyes.
It worked for me from the first night. I took 3mg about half an hour before I wanted to sleep and I was dead on my feet by the time that 30 minutes was over.
3 mg is actually considered to be a very high dose. There are studies that suggest that smaller dosages are just as, if not more, effective than large dosages. Those same studies indicate that large dosages can be counterproductive in some people. I’d suggest cutting the pills in halves or even quarters and seeing if that works for you.
I stopped taking it after about a year. I began to feel tired all of the time and my memory was spotty at best. I always felt like I was dreaming and would sometimes “wake up” and realize that, while I wasn’t asleep, I wasn’t really conscious for the past few minutes. About a week after I stopped using melatonin those feelings went away.
I was waking up at 3 am every night. Get up, go to the bathroom (I did need to go), and then usually back to sleep. I bought some room-darkening curtains and voila! no more waking up at 3 am! I figured that a car was turning the corner by my house and the lights were briefly shining on my window.
I turn the alarm clock away from me so I can’t see the face, but covering it is a good idea too.
And if your laptop is in your bedroom and it is set to sleep, some will have a light that brightens and dims like it is breathing.
And I have to cover up the bright blue light on my cell phone charger!
I have been taking 5 mg of melatonin and 25 mg of diphenhydramine at night most nights, and last night I added 440 mg of Naproxen for my back ache.
I don’t take it often- only when I’m sleep-deprived and want to guarantee a long night of deep sleep, but I find that 1/2 of a 1 mg tablet is more than enough to put me down for a good solid 8-9 hours. It takes about 30 mins on a mostly empty stomach to feel the effects, which are sleepiness, drowsiness, etc…
In my experience, 3mg is good for putting me down for about 2 hours. If I want to stay down 8 hours, I’d need 4 of them to get the job done without a break.
If I wake up early, say 2 AM, then I have an even harder time going back to sleep on the nights I took melatonin than the nights I don’t. I will also second the comment about missing the window; I’ll take it, lay down immediately, then read until things get fuzzy.
Cat Whisperer and pudytat72 – you’re onto something. I just got black-out curtains for my bedroom because I was waking up before dawn because of the light flooding into my room, and it was driving me crazy. Unfortunately, the curtains don’t fit properly and I still get a considerable amount of light through the windows, so I’ll have to look for something else. (I’ve worn sleepmasks before but I hate them, and I always wake up to find I’ve taken them off in my sleep. Now I keep a scarf by my bed so I can drape it over my eyes if I wake around dawn, but I don’t like doing that either. I just don’t like things on my face when I’m trying to sleep! Good thing I have no cats.) At this point, I’ll hang towels or tinfoil in the windows if it means I can sleep better. Anything.
So that’s one thing to do. I’ll also try experimenting with the melatonin dosage to see what works. Everyone who’s mentioned there’s a window of affectiveness – last night, I took it and went to bed and read for a while, and I did feel myself get sleepy but kept on reading for about 15 more minutes…that must have been the window, and I missed it.
I’d like to thank this thread for alerting me to the fact that there is apparently such a thing as extended release melatonin! I’ve struggled with insomnia for years, and have tried all the tips above, as well as prescription drugs (which work too well - I am out cold for ~ 12 hours with Ambien, which is habit-forming anyway). SOmething new to try!