Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

Didn't see anything in the article about how much melatonin a person would get from eating food treated this way. I sometimes take small doses of melatonin during the summer months when my sleep pattern tends to drift if I don't actively keep it under control but wonder if consuming it through diet would end up making lots of people groggy during the day.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#5

Post by maltyr » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:28 PM UTC

I'm not sure we should cover our food in melatonin. People would recoil at the thought of pretty much any other hormone being added to our food supply.

It's strange to me how Melatonin is so uncontrolled in usage, dosage, etc., despite being a hormone.

The article suggests it's safer than current food additives, but I find that statement questionable. We don't understand the full effect of Melatonin on the human body, so I don't know how you can make that conclusion.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#6

Post by Arrath » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #4

Didn't see anything in the article about how much melatonin a person would get from eating food treated this way. I sometimes take small doses of melatonin during the summer months when my sleep pattern tends to drift if I don't actively keep it under control but wonder if consuming it through diet would end up making lots of people groggy during the day.

Forget groggy, melatonin generally works as a sleep aid for me but also gives me wildly trippy and fucked up dreams. I stopped using it specifically because of that.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#7

Post by rat9988 » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

maltyr wrote: post #5

I'm not sure we should cover our food in melatonin. People would recoil at the thought of pretty much any other hormone being added to our food supply. It's strange to me how Melatonin is so uncontrolled in usage, dosage, etc., despite being a hormone. The article suggests it's safer than current food additives, but I find that statement questionable. We don't understand the full effect of Melatonin on the human body…

There are many many studies on melatonin, it's not like we know nothing.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#8

Post by vvpan » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

Melatonin is very interesting because it is believed that all living things (bacteria, fungi, etc) have it [1]. Calling it a "sleep aid" is somewhat off because in humans and other animals it is compound heavily involved in modulating circadian rhythms. It is not a "drug".

And a little personal anecdote about it: I have gone through a period of bad sleep and depression and was taking melotonin to help with sleep. On some mornings I would wake up completely emotionally destroyed, barely able to function. After observing the patterns for a few months I notice that this happened only on days after melotonin intake. Looking around the internet I've found stories of people describing exactly the same symptoms as I've had mornings after melotonin ingestion. Long story short I am likely not taking melotonin ever again and regret ever doing so. Sometimes I even wonder whether it generally exacerbated or even caused my condition at the time. I think research on this is scant atm.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6481276/

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#9

Post by tanjtanjtanj » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:40 PM UTC

Arrath wrote: post #6

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #4

Didn't see anything in the article about how much melatonin a person would get from eating food treated this way. I sometimes take small doses of melatonin during the summer months when my sleep pattern tends to drift if I don't actively keep it under control but wonder if consuming it through diet would end up making lots of people groggy during the day.

Forget groggy, melatonin generally works as a sleep aid for me but also gives me wildly trippy and fucked up dreams. I stopped using it specifically because of that.

Your dosage was likely too high. I had the same issue using the smallest dose I could find at the pharmacy (5mg) and it was totally fixed by going to a pill one fifteenth of the dosage that I procured online.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#10

Post by maltyr » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

rat9988 wrote: post #7

maltyr wrote: post #5

I'm not sure we should cover our food in melatonin. People would recoil at the thought of pretty much any other hormone being added to our food supply. It's strange to me how Melatonin is so uncontrolled in usage, dosage, etc., despite being a hormone. The article suggests it's safer than current food additives, but I find that statement questionable. We don't understand the full effect of Melatonin on the human body…

There are many many studies on melatonin, it's not like we know nothing.

And those studies suggest that melatonin plays a critical part in your circadian rhythm, which kind of implies that adding it to your food would also screw with your circadian rhythm. That alone seems like a good enough reason to caution against adding it into the food supply.

Additionally, there are receptors for melatonin in a number of systems in the body, and we don't have much knowledge on what those receptors do.