I’ve always had some minor issues with sleep but lately (maybe for the past year) I never feel rested and I think the quality of my sleep is just not very good. Either I can’t fall asleep, can’t stay asleep, or wake up really early. I get ok results from a diphenhydramine pill but I don’t like the way it makes me feel in the morning.
I had a sleep study (quite a few years ago) and they concluded I did not have sleep apnea.
I tried melatonin around the same time and don’t recall it doing anything, but I’m certainly willing to try again.
My husband also feels that he just doesn’t get a deep, restful sleep on his own. He feels that melatonin improves his quality of sleep.
I used to use it when I had a martial arts class late in the evening that left me too pepped up to sleep. It worked like a charm to put me out, but I would wake up in the middle of the night and have to fall asleep all over again.
I am pretty sensitive to it, so I have to take a minute portion to not be groggy the next day. On the plus side that grogginess comes with a free side of calmness and centered feeling, but still makes it difficult to think quickly. If I take just a crumble of a pill, far less than a quarter of a pill, then I am not groggy the next day, and it is only slightly less effective at putting me to sleep.
I have terrible insomnia. I take something on a regular basis to help me sleep-- it’s an epilepsy medication, but I take a subclinical dose for seizures, and I take it at 5pm. My problem according to a sleep study is that I sleep so lightly going into REM sleep often startles me awake.
I also have a problem with falling asleep just because I have so much anxiety around going to bed and the possibility that I might not sleep. I take 5mg of melatonin 1/2 hour before going to bed.
I also go to bed at the EXACT same time every night, to the extent I can control it. I have prescriptions for Ambien and Klonopin as PRN (take as needed) because sometimes I get off schedule, and sometimes I just have extra-bad nights.
I don’t think that melatonin is a placebo, because I have had autistic clients who took it-- many autistic people are deficient in melatonin, and have trouble sleeping. The stuff works like magic, and these are low-language people who don’t know they’re being given a medicine for sleep.
However, apnea is a breathing problem. I don’t know that it would be a good idea to try to induce a deeper sleep for someone with apnea-- as I understand it, people with apnea wake up to get their breathing started. I would experiment with things that help you sleep in a particular position-- for example, if elevating you head a little helps, get a reading pillow that elevates your head; if side sleeping helps, get a body pillow to keep you from rolling onto your back.
If none of those work, ask your doctor about CPAP.
You could also ask the doctor about melatonin, and if he OKs it, that’s another thing, but I’d really run it by my doctor first if I had apnea.
It works well for me but holy cow does it give me odd dreams. Not *bad *dreams, per se, just really detailed, vivid ones. Another plus, it does not leave me groggy the next morning.
I take it occasionally when I have had several successive bad nights. It relaxes me enough that I can drop off within half an hour.
But it does absolutely nothing for my husband. I don’t know if he needs a higher dose or I’m particularly sensitive to it. The bottle in my cabinet is now 2 years past its Use By date, but it still does the trick.
Melatonin helps those who are melatonin deficient. It doesn’t help anyone else.
Your brain makes melatonin during the day when bright light, like sunlight, reaches your pineal gland. It releases that melatonin at night. Some people who spend most of their days indoors may be deficient in their naturally occurring melatonin on a regular basis. This may be why people tend to sleep better when they’re camping, even if they haven’t been doing vigorous activity during the day.
If you’re not melatonin deficient, melatonin won’t help.
When I first got into this business I struggled with the weird hours and sleeping in strange places and with short nights where we had to go from working hard to sound asleep in 45 minutes to have a chance for barely 7 hours sleep before getting up to do another 12-14 hour workday.
I tried melatonin. Can’t remember the dosage, whatever was typical for drugstore brand in the early 90s.
So I tried it on some of those short nights straight from work to bed. It promptly knocked out one half of my brain. The other half was still racing from the workday. It felt like being trapped in the half-awake / half-asleep state that we normally slide through in just a few seconds with little recollection of the transition. This was long-lasting and lucid.
It was weird and mildly unpleasant. When all was said and done my impression was that I didn’t sleep any better or more rested with it than without.
But I did learn a bit about the various subsections in my brain/mind and how the parts conspire to make up the whole.
After about 5 nights of these experiments over a month or so I pitched the rest of the bottle. Haven’t tried it again since, nor felt the need. As an experiment it seemed/seems harmless and satisfied some of my curiosity. But as a sleep aid it seemed pointless, at least for my particular use case.
AIUI, totally blind people have a major problem with melatonin deficiency, since their visual system never shows a “it’s daylight now” scene to the brain.
I used to take it when I worked nights and had to go to bed at 2pm. I still had to stop eating, draw the curtains, put down the screens, and start winding down at least 2 hours before bed. If I didn’t have at least 7 hours to sleep I’d be very foggy after waking up. I took a 3mg fast dissolving pill.
I found Celestial Seasonings Peach Sleepytime Tea or Yogi Soothing Caramel Bedtime Tea more effective with less fogginess. Winding down properly was still required. YMMV
It’s like magic for me and my 11 year old daughter. Both of us have a hard time getting to sleep. It’s a constant battle to keep our sleep schedule, but 2.5 mg of melatonin from Spring Valley puts us down for a solid six hours at least and I’ve never felt groggy. I mention the brand because some brands have no effect at all. I buy 5 mg and half them, one for each of us. It takes about an hour and we’re both too groggy to function as long as we turn out the lights and maybe read or watch a show. I’ve noticed that if I take it and something requires me to function I will be able to easily snap out of it unlike with ambien or benadryl. I never feel thick in the morning with melatonin either.
I have noticed if I take a full tablet, 5 mg. I will have very strange dreams. Never bad ones though.
We’ve been taking it off and on for about three years. I can go to sleep for a while without it but if my schedule is disturbed for more than a weekend I will need it to get back on track.
My 27 year old took it a few times with absolutely no effect at all.
I used it when I worked third shift. I had, and still have, no problem staying up all night. My body just never wants to go to sleep once the sun comes up. Two days of that, while working with heavy machinery, meant something had to change.
I find it is mostly useful for resetting sleep schedules.
I am naturally a night person, and generally feel most tired and ready to go to bed as the sun is coming up. That worked fine when I worked second shift, but the last several years, I have had to actually get up in the morning.
It is not hard for me to get off schedule, and start staying up till 2,3, even 4 in the morning without feeling like sleeping.
That’s when I use melatonin. I take maybe 5 of the 3 mg tablets, usually just for a couple of nights, to get my sleep schedule back on track. Works pretty damn well. If it is particularly hard to get to sleep, I may wash it down with a beer.
Once I am going to be before midnight again, I am usually good for a month or so before my schedule starts slipping later and later again.
I find that it works for about 30 minutes and then wears off. By itself, that isn’t enough to put me to sleep (except for the 30 minutes), but paired with phenibut and/or theanine, I can get a full night’s sleep. Those two supplements allow your brain to slow down enough for sleep, but don’t actually trigger sleep. Melatonin triggers sleep, but doesn’t slow the brain down. You need to do a mix to get the full effect.
If you try phenibut, though, be aware that it has a similar usage profile to caffeine. You’ll gain a tolerance to it if you use it for more than a couple of days at a time, and you’ll suffer a headache if you stop taking it after gaining tolerance. So you can really only use the stuff once or twice a week for full effect.
Theanine is less effective but I think maybe escapes the tolerance issue (I’m not sure).
Either way, I’ve found that getting the once or twice a week deep sleep is pretty good.
A guy I worked with tried it and the combo didn’t work for him. But he’s also 23 and lives in constant stress, so I suspect that the dosage was too low for him or just that the effects are too small to deal with the raging hormones of a 23 year old. But it is conceivable that if these don’t work for you that modifying the dosage may work out. You’ll just want to do some research to see if there’s any recommended upper limit to try out.
First night I took it, it worked great. After that, it got less and less effective. In addition, I started getting some really bad side effects (weird pains and uncomfortablness/tightness in the torso, occasionlly leading to really bad vomitting) after taking it a while. I’d much rather deal with the groggy next day of Benadryl than go through that again.