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Melatonin

gwern.net

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Re: Melatonin

#201

Post by ericd »

WalterSear wrote: post #196
jobu wrote: post #98

My youngest daughter is borderline ADHD, and rather than trying Ritalin we've been using Melatonin in the evenings to help ease the bedtime process. (In the hopes that more sleep will help her cope with problems focusing.) The change has been dramatic. Previously it was a 3-4 hour battle each night for her to get ready for bed and stay in bed. Now with 3mg of Melatonin she spontaneously decides to get ready for bed h…

3mg is a very large dose, particularly for a child. I take 0.5 mg myself.

Yeah, the Trader Joes ones are 0.5 mg, taste like peppermint candies, and knock me out within 15 minutes.

Re: Melatonin

#202

Post by [deleted] »

desigooner wrote: post #65
thuzarsky wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also strongly recommend the Trader Joe's brand. I've been using melatonin for a couple of years and haven't found anything that has been as consistently effective.

I've heard many of TJs supplements are white labelled Nature's way products

[deleted]

Re: Melatonin

#203

Post by tedks »

ajslater wrote: post #189
tedks wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it tends to induce horrific, apocalyptic nightmares I've used melatonin for years, as have many of my friends and family, and I've never had anyone mention this. I've always had more vivid dreams with melatonin, but I've never had nightmares.

Melatonin does not directly induce nightmares, per say, just the vivid or lucid dreams you are familiar with. However, if just one of those incredibly vivid melatonin induced dreams goes awry and descends into nightmare territory, you will remember it for a long, long time.

I've had nightmares while taking melatonin with the same frequency as I've had them the rest of my life. They're more vivid, but I've forgotten them just fine.

Re: Melatonin

#204

Post by tedks »

goldfeld wrote: post #139
tedks wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it tends to induce horrific, apocalyptic nightmares I've used melatonin for years, as have many of my friends and family, and I've never had anyone mention this. I've always had more vivid dreams with melatonin, but I've never had nightmares.

Perhaps it's something to do with particular makes of the drug, but I've also had my worst nightmares while on it, and the words GP used are spot on for me. My mom, aunt and other members of my family had similar experiences and we've mostly stopped taking it. I did partly because it no longer has the surefire effect it once had on me, and partly because I'd often wake up in a crappy/despairing mood because of the ap…

Melatonin isn't a drug, it's the neurohormone that provokes sleep. Your body produces it naturally already.

Re: Melatonin

#205

Post by gingerlime »

linohh wrote: post #120

Melatonin is prescription only in Germany. Bad luck, I guess.

Also in the UK according to some comments here[1]. Some comments suggested buying from websites like biovea. Do you happen to know if it's legal to buy there and import to Germany? (they even have a .de website in German).

I'm living in Germany, but not a native speaker, that's why I'm asking.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495576

Re: Melatonin

#206

Post by krmmalik »

brador wrote: post #188
krmmalik wrote: post #91

I've had on and off problems with insomnia, but have finally come up with a pretty reliable method for overcoming it. Some of my methods were used by others as well. I think it's important to identify what's causing the insomnia. It's not always going to be the same thing for everyone, or even for you, every single time. Some days, for me, it's just simply because I have too much on my mind. Other times, it's because…

What is the Blackseed oil for?

Magnesium (amongst other important minerals and fatty acids). To relax the nervous system.

Re: Melatonin

#207

Post by rms »

ChristianMarks wrote: post #114

Gwern comes close to suggesting filtering blue light, but I will repeat a previous post. I've tried melatonin, but it is no substitute for for filtering blue light in my experience, and it tends to induce horrific, apocalyptic nightmares (granted, a night dreaming of EAS Emergency Action Notifications is better than no sleep at all). I used to be an owl for years--decades. A regular 9-5 schedule seemed out of reach.…

Nightmares in response to melatonin suggests low serotonin. Try 5-HTP sometime, which is a partial prodrug for melatonin and in practice works quite similarly to melatonin, except it induces vivid happy dreams and is the proscribed treatment for night terrors in children.

Re: Melatonin

#208

Post by gwern »

pesenti wrote: post #200
gwern wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are making the same error he is by ignoring the possible "black swan", which, with every drug, can have dramatic consequences. The black swan is a pretty useless concept at this point, because people like you will drag it out against anything they dislike. You cannot give any rigorous formulation or evidence for it, and the best you can do is drag out some old example like thalidomide.

No rigorous formulation? The black swan has a very simple mathematical model: an unlikely event with an effect so great that it will affect the expected value. For example, a greater risk of dying after 20 or 30 years of use - which has not yet been studied. In your calculation of ROI you completely ignore unknown long term effects. Yes it's hard and often impossible to quantify black swans. But keeping them in mind…

> The black swan has a very simple mathematical model: an unlikely event with an effect so great that it will affect the expected value. For example, a greater risk of dying after 20 or 30 years of use - which has not yet been studied. In your calculation of ROI you completely ignore unknown long term effects.

Alright, let me clarify it then: by the remotely meaningful version presented by Taleb, your argument doesn't work and Taleb's writings support taking melatonin, rather than not taking melatonin. Why? Because even in the event of a negative 'black swan' your losses are strictly limited: the worse that can happen is you die. In fact, if I may borrow Taleb's 2x2 table from _The Black Swan_ where he brings up positive 'black swans' as well, it's easier to make a case that taking melatonin is a positive 'black swan': the negative possibilities are strictly in Mediocristan, with limited losses, easy to measure over large populations, predictable, not varying over time; while the positive possibilities look like some of Taleb's examples of attempting to exploit positive 'black swans' in Absurdistan - improved productivity, healthy, and seizing opportunities, things with potentially unlimited payoffs - such as moving to cities and networking with people.

> For example, a greater risk of dying after 20 or 30 years of use - which has not yet been studied.

FUD.

Re: Melatonin

#209

Post by dimitar »

I've used melatonin and it definitely works, especially for improving the quality of sleep and sleeping under the sun.

However I've found that just not eating for 6-8 hours before you go to bed helps much more. Even eating an apple can disrupt sleep. This works really well because if you suppress eating before you got to sleep, you also wake up on time and pretty fresh to boot.

The only downsides are that some people get tempted too easily to eat before bed or that if you absolutely have to stay late an hour or two more, you'll still wake up 16 hours after you stopped eating, leaving you with less sleep than intended.

Re: Melatonin

#210

Post by pesenti »

gwern wrote: post #208
pesenti wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No rigorous formulation? The black swan has a very simple mathematical model: an unlikely event with an effect so great that it will affect the expected value. For example, a greater risk of dying after 20 or 30 years of use - which has not yet been studied. In your calculation of ROI you completely ignore unknown long term effects. Yes it's hard and often impossible to quantify black swans. But keeping them in mind…

> The black swan has a very simple mathematical model: an unlikely event with an effect so great that it will affect the expected value. For example, a greater risk of dying after 20 or 30 years of use - which has not yet been studied. In your calculation of ROI you completely ignore unknown long term effects. Alright, let me clarify it then: by the remotely meaningful version presented by Taleb, your argument doesn'…

Yes you are right, the effect is limited: you die. That's true of every black swan - the worst that can happen is everybody dies. But I don't think that anybody would consider that a "mediocre" outcome. And at the end, you could/should quantify it in your model, or at least mention it as an unknown in your ROI.

You do not mention any studies of long term effects and you consider FUD raising the possibility that there could be adverse effects. When more and more studies show negative long term effect of substances that were considered innocuous (like vitamins), it's not FUD, it's being reasonably cautious.

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