Earlier quoted context omitted.
Share a link to 0.1 dose product please
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Flagged this comment and downvoted it. This is the second time.
Read the HN guidelines.
See my prev comment for the link.
Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
181–190 of 224 posts
Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
So much for a good faith discussion here. I don't appreciate that you tell me to "get a grip". You're not steelmanning. Instead, your reaction comes off as a knee jerk reaction. There are enough communities where I have to come up with defenses to deal with that nonsense. Don't do it here please. US melatonin measured dosage can be 4x as much as what is reported [1, 2]. Also 0.3 mg is the recommended dose [4]. A lot…
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> You literally said you can't trust the US for this. Okay.
Refute my sources, I gave you sources. You're ignoring it. If you're ignoring the studies I provide, why have a discussion at all?
I've been getting melatonin at 0.1 mg for the past 15 years in the Netherlands. I first got wind that it was different in the US on a Huberman podcast. He got it from studies. I cited some.
> I've been using this forum for 20 years.
Then act according to the guidelines.
Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. I’m also a night owl who struggled waking up like an early bird. Was the transition and efforts worth it? Recently I tried to find a better schedule other than spending another X years fighting my biological clock
This is how I did it: this is about two things: mornings and evenings and both need attention. Set a new wake up time. Deduct 7 hours from it. Deduct one more for buffer. This tells you when you need to be in bed with lights out and trying to fall asleep to then get the mandatory 7h of sleep to be a functional human being in the morning. If your new wake target is 5:45, you need to be in bed lights out at 22:45 and s…
I have done all this and more. Done all the stupid advice you get from everyone who was simply a morning person living an irresponsible life but then grew up, hired professionals, and even tried prescription drugs for a period of time.
It is not totally doable. It just makes fitting into the economic world slightly less shitty.
I yearn for retirement not so I can stop working, but so I can finally get a full “night” worth of sleep and wake up with a clear mind for the first time since my 20s when I worked a night shift. It’s been decades of being rather miserable.
Not everyone is built for the current world, and the gatekeepers all apparently seem to be morning people who despise night folks.
Waking up is the easy part. Having your brain engage to full power is the hard bit. I will get 8-9 hours of sleep and still spend the whole day groggy until the evening, and then my mental energy and motivation really kicks in around 9pm or so. But then it’s time to wind down.
Vacations for me are just taking a week off so I can go back to my natural sleeping patterns and do personal projects at 4am.
Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go to the Netherlands, to the Kruidvat (or Etos or something similar) and just buy a lifetime worth of supply of Melatonin. It's 0.1 mg. I'm Dutch and live here. But my wife is American. If I ever happen to live in the US (chances are there in my lifetime). I'm going to employ this strategy. I don't trust the US with this and the Netherlands has proven itself to me in this sense. There are probably many more European…
Drugs are regulated with the same care in the US, the problem is you are comparing a drug in Europe with a dietary supplement in the US. You can’t expect to grab a high quality of any dietary supplement from say Walmart. It’s the same in Europe. In the US there are labs making high quality dietary supplements, but you usually don’t find them at retail stores or even Amazon, so it needs a bit of research.
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Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
What worked for me is mirtazapine at 7.5 mg (higher will make it a stimulant anyway). The irony is my doctor is really sceptical. A friend prescribed it to me, who is also a doctor. And he was a bit pissed at my doctor. Quite literally: "your doctor can fucking call me if she questions my methods and I will overflow her with research on this" type of vibe. He did quite some research into it. And I trust him. Of cours…
Interesting you're the first person to mention this. I had chronic insomnia for >25 years (my entire life) making it extremely difficult to hold down a job or generally interact with society. I've since been on Mirtazipine for about 15 years and the difference is unbelievable. In the UK it's only dispensed in 15, 30 or 45mg. I was started on 15mg but that left me extremely groggy for most of the next day. My doctor c…
Edit: this comment got out of hand and also became a journal entry.
> Interesting you're the first person to mention this.
I'm also surprised it's not mentioned more. Maybe because it's regulated as a drug? I mean I'm also making a ton of necessary disclaimers.
> I had chronic insomnia for >25 years (my entire life) making it extremely difficult to hold down a job or generally interact with society. I've since been on Mirtazipine for about 15 years and the difference is unbelievable.
Same, entire life, my life was falling apart. Suicide would be realistic within 5 to 10 years. Now it's not. Suicide by insomnia is a dark thing but when I'm on r/insomnia I can relate. The agony is too much and when the insomnia hits hardest there's no willpower to stop anything, it's just pure suffering and torture. I wasn't there yet thankfully but insomnia is fucking dark and it is sad to see that there's not much more of a focus on it. It's damn debilitating. Moreover, like you probably did, I saw it as normal. Because Dutch doctors went with the "ah you're fine" strategy. Dutch doctors are quite stiff in that sense (if you're almost dying... sure then they'll help you. Or if there's something clearly wrong with you like a broken arm). It differs from US healthcare by quite a lot.
> In the UK it's only dispensed in 15, 30 or 45mg. I was started on 15mg but that left me extremely groggy for most of the next day. My doctor convinced me to move up to 30mg and I'm able to mostly sleep and actually function the next day.
I have a 15 mg that you can snap in 2 because it has a ridge in the middle (or however you call that).
> It's not all roses and there's a handful of side effects. Personally I had about 6 months of metallic taste in my mouth and it absolutely buggered my sex drive. A few friends jokingly call it "mirfatapine" as it can make them binge-eat and put on weight, but personally I find the good absolutely outweighs the bad and it's literally life changing.
No bad side effects at 7.5 mg here, thank god.
> I know if I forget to take it, because I suddenly realise it's 4am and I'm still wide awake and gibbering.
Same
> If I'm working festivals then I can _choose_ not to take it and go back to my old routine working 52-hour shifts before falling asleep.
Yea, the routine changes I can make are a super power. I can only be awake for 12 hours today and I need to sleep? No problem!
Stay awake for 20? Sure I'll just not use the drug.
It's insane. I am now almost the opposite, I have sleeping super powers.
> Whilst I'm not overly thrilled at taking psychoactive drugs nightly
I agree not thrilled either.
> that actually makes it possible to sleep nightly, and therefore function long term when I'm forced to wake up for work. If you're desperate and out of options it's absolutely worth trying, but do be aware it takes months to become effective.
For me it worked the first time taking it. We're all different that way.
What nudges me towards sleep (but is not enough):
1. 0.3 mg melatonin two hours before bedtime (a higher dose doesn't do much more for me)
2. L-theanine (makes me a bit more chill, literally a chill pill haha)
3. Apigenin (still under research if it's placebo or not)
4. Magnesium (sometimes; I think it's because I sometimes have a deficit, usually related to light restless leg syndrome. It always helps when I have restless leg syndrome)
5. Vipassana meditation (25% chance of knocking me out cold unmedicated, so pretty cool but also... not enough)
6. Cuddling with my wife before bed (also like a 10 to 25% effect, I need a higher sample size to do this unmedicated but don't want to risk my sleep rhythm nowadays)
7. Sleep restriction (apply strategically because 6 hours of sleep is not fun, especially not if you've had insomnia for decades - I have little reserves, even if I sleep well for weeks nowadays - insomnia fucked me up hard)
8. General CBT-I stuff and general sleep hygiene
9. I have a Spotify playlist that is my type of winddown music (very chill lofi, very chill chillstep, or slow Hawaiian guitar music)
10. Night walks. And they may actually be the key to fix my insomnia unmedicated but I'd need to experiment a lot. My insomnia is related to feeling "false energy". Aka I sleep 2 to 4 hours and I wake up and I feel like I'm immediately ready, immediately energetic. Wanna go for a 5 mile run? Sure! Sounds fun! And it usually keeps up x2 the ours I sleep (so 4 hours of sleep means 8 hours of feeling awake - and shit - but also awake; afterwards I completely crash). What a night walk can do is that sometimes I've noticed after 30 minutes I feel the "false" part of the "false energy" vibe and I notice I actually feel dead tired. Once that feeling comes over me like a blanket. I can go right back to sleep and fall asleep. The annoying thing is the feeling has to come.
11. Cuddling a pillow, even when I sleep next to my wife. It helps.
12. Temperature control. I don't notice temperature that well but when I self-reflected deeply I noticed higher temperatures keep me awake, and sometimes that was the actual issue.
13. Mosquito control (lights out, phone light on, small vacuum ready, easiest way to get rid of them)
--
Funnily enough I don't notice much of an effect that when I have blue light at night that it is harder for me to sleep. It probably has a mild adverse effect but nothing major.
All of these 13 things are not enough. I still miss 3 days per week on average by doing all of this. And sometimes I also get in a horrible loop if this happens from Sunday to Monday as I am prone of "if you feel super tired it can be even harder to fall asleep". I've lost a job from that effect. Losing that job is what made me determined to wage an internal war on it and let everyone know I was doing it. That's how I know to solve really difficult things: fix the problem or die trying. I was that desperate, which is my my doctor friend intervened after seeing me a year of doing that (knowing I was doing this for 3 years already).
Nowadays though it is:
1. Mirtazapine 7.5 mg (one hour before bed)
2. Melatonin 0.3 mg (two hours before bed)
I carry it in my pockets so I always have it so I can take it. It's a bit odd to have my sleep meds by day, but I've missed timings because I was too focused on something and wouldn't go upstairs or still at a friend's place just about to leave.
3. Mosquito and temperature control
These 3 things don't nudge me to sleep. They make me sleep.
For fellow insomniacs, we're all different but I hope there are one or two things that you haven't tried yet. I doubt it, but one can hope that they can help alleviate some insomnia of other people, haha.
Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor etc. I'm a former lifetime insomniac. And my friend quite literally saved me. For now at least he did. Who knows how long Mirtazapine is going to work, but I'm happy to see BuildTheRobots is on it for 15 years and still going strong. I know that anti-histamine medication are able to be taken for a lifetime. So that's a promising sign.
Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go to the Netherlands, to the Kruidvat (or Etos or something similar) and just buy a lifetime worth of supply of Melatonin. It's 0.1 mg. I'm Dutch and live here. But my wife is American. If I ever happen to live in the US (chances are there in my lifetime). I'm going to employ this strategy. I don't trust the US with this and the Netherlands has proven itself to me in this sense. There are probably many more European…
Drugs are regulated with the same care in the US, the problem is you are comparing a drug in Europe with a dietary supplement in the US. You can’t expect to grab a high quality of any dietary supplement from say Walmart. It’s the same in Europe. In the US there are labs making high quality dietary supplements, but you usually don’t find them at retail stores or even Amazon, so it needs a bit of research.
You seem to be beating around some kind of bush by intentionally neglecting to define your definition of "high quality" in this context. Are you saying that 1mg of melatonin from Walmart or Amazon do not actually contain 1mg of melatonin?
Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s hard to do a blind test on yourself. But I accidentally ran this test on myself recently and didn’t realise until I got home and found my full cup on the bench. It was disturbing to know how much I need it.
As someone who (foolishly) only drank decaf until my early 40s, I can tell you that the mental difference when you start drinking caffeine is just amazing. It is wonderful stuff. And not only can you finally think in the mornings, but provided you don't get heart issues from it, it appears to reduce your risk of Alzheimer's substantially.
Everyone is different. I'm in my 40s and throughout my while life have found that caffeine only has two effects on me: 1) If I have any later than afternoon, I can't fall asleep when I want to, 2) If I have too much at once (like a single diet pop), I get the jitters.
Otherwise, literally no effect. I sometimes drink tea in the morning for breakfast (a London fog) and it doesn't affect my cognition or mood at all.
Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd expect the standard OTC dose to be a sensible starting point, not potentially several times more than a younger person needs
For sleep aids this is often not the case. I'm in my early 50s and tried Doxylamine Succinate 2 years ago for the first time - an innocent Costco "Sleep Aid". I was beyond groggy - quite nonfunctional - until the following afternoon and would not have trusted myself with operating a car even then.
Doxylamine succinate is a fairly powerful antihistamine. I only take it when I'm sick, and I take a half -dose. It has closer to a 12-hour half life, which is why you felt so groggy. I have to basically take it at 7pm if I want to be operational by 10am the following day.
Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#189Hard to discuss this with only a short abstract. They don't even give a dose or formulation of the melatonin, and details like "We found no significant differences between the melatonin and sleep groups on any of our sleep measures." raise more questions than they answer.
Hi Gwern, just wanted to say your post on melatonin helped me sort out my sleep in my twenties. I had hangups using it on a regular basis and your arguments helped me get over that taboo. Thank you.
For anyone interested: https://gwern.net/melatonin
Re: Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, the 8sleep is pretty nice because it heats and cools you so you get better sleep, and you can still put your phone away if you have one.
Better sleep than what? Humans have been sleeping for at least 400 years
Sure and health-science hasn't improved since then right?