Live data from Hacker News

Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

anthropocenemagazine.org

71–80 of 212 posts

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be uncontrolled in the US but not everywhere. It’s not allowed to be sold without a prescription where I live, and even then it’s only prescribed for chronic sleep disorders. I always ask anyone travelling to the US to bring back a bottle.

In Germany freely available OTC.

Is the OTC dosage limited? I recall in a prior life, my partner would bring melatonin back from the states to Germany for her brother.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#72
post #25
post #8

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…

The dosage of melatonin you can buy over-the-counter in the US always surprises me. In the UK I believe it’s only 2mg with a prescription, but I was seeing 5mg+ just in a grocery store.

Up to 2mg for sleep, 3mg for jet lag in the UK. 3mg affects me badly - I take at most 1mg.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#73
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be uncontrolled in the US but not everywhere. It’s not allowed to be sold without a prescription where I live, and even then it’s only prescribed for chronic sleep disorders. I always ask anyone travelling to the US to bring back a bottle.

> chronic sleep disorders Wow. It's been a long time but I've definitely taken melatonin and if I felt any effects at all they definitely weren't strong if even noticable. Here (USA) Ambien is prescribed often for chronic sleep issues and that drug absolutely terrifies me. I've had friends addicted to it who wound up in a lot of criminal trouble for trespassing and wandering around beaches naked and things like that…

As with a lot of medicine the dosage matters a lot. I will take .5 mg of melatonin when going to bed earlier than usual and the effect is fairly subtle. But it's commonly sold in 10mg doses which seems very high.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#74
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…

It may be uncontrolled in the US but not everywhere. It’s not allowed to be sold without a prescription where I live, and even then it’s only prescribed for chronic sleep disorders. I always ask anyone travelling to the US to bring back a bottle.

I asked a pharmacy in Reykjavik if they sold it, or Tylenol PM, and the pharmacist reacted like I'd asked to buy a brick of cocaine.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#75
post #8

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…

I wonder about the dosage you might’ve been taking. Many, many people take much more than needed, and higher doses are more likely to have adverse effects. 250-300 µg is an appropriate dosage for most adults. Note that common over-the-counter dosages are 10 to 25 mg. There is a Cochran collaboration meta-analysis supporting this. I work in a pharmacy school in the US. One of my colleagues told me a funny anecdote abo…

It can be frustrating finding it in reasonable doses. I remember reading somewhere that the original formula was quite a small dose and other manufacturers simply increased the dose to get around the patent. Naturally, people showed a preference for the higher doses because they assumed it must be better, despite a lack of evidence. As a result, manufacturers making pills with a more reasonable dose were less likely to sell their product and a general trend of increasing doses was observed. This is why it’s easy to find 10-25mg dosed pills in stores, but difficult to find anything sub 3mg, let alone sub 1mg.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#77
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what to think of this book, where the author literally persuades people to megadose on the hormone: https://www.amazon.com/Melatonin-Transform-Melatonin-resilie... It's mindboggling that this is freely available.

Yes, the absolute mind boggling horror of free people being able to decide for themselves what to ingest.

> Yes, the absolute mind boggling horror of free people being able to decide for themselves what to ingest.

Absolute horror that people ingest things based on a lie. It's on level of this powder doesn't contain asbestos. Just because he isn't a big corp doesn't mean he is free to lie and profit on his lies.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#78
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chronic sleep disorders Wow. It's been a long time but I've definitely taken melatonin and if I felt any effects at all they definitely weren't strong if even noticable. Here (USA) Ambien is prescribed often for chronic sleep issues and that drug absolutely terrifies me. I've had friends addicted to it who wound up in a lot of criminal trouble for trespassing and wandering around beaches naked and things like that…

As with a lot of medicine the dosage matters a lot. I will take .5 mg of melatonin when going to bed earlier than usual and the effect is fairly subtle. But it's commonly sold in 10mg doses which seems very high.

I have to go out of my way to find doses under 1mg, almost everything they sell in US retail stores is 5mg or 10mg. Inevitably I end up with something marketed for babies.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#79
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chronic sleep disorders Wow. It's been a long time but I've definitely taken melatonin and if I felt any effects at all they definitely weren't strong if even noticable. Here (USA) Ambien is prescribed often for chronic sleep issues and that drug absolutely terrifies me. I've had friends addicted to it who wound up in a lot of criminal trouble for trespassing and wandering around beaches naked and things like that…

As with a lot of medicine the dosage matters a lot. I will take .5 mg of melatonin when going to bed earlier than usual and the effect is fairly subtle. But it's commonly sold in 10mg doses which seems very high.

My understanding is that melatonin has an inverse correlation between dosage and effect. 10mg won't make you as sleepy as 1mg.

I take 1mg of melatonin every night, and it does immediately make me sleepy. I used to buy 10mg at the drugstore and it just makes me feel like shit for the next day.

Re: Melatonin as a treatment for food waste

#80
Terrible title.

...melatonin could also be a vital tool to help fresh produce survive its own journey from farm to fork, reducing the monumental amount of food loss that occurs each year.

I interpreted the title to mean it would be applied to food after it was deemed "waste" as a form of "waste treatment" of some kind.

I am not thrilled by the proposal. Melatonin impacts the immune system in ways not yet understood. This could be kind of like adding more antibiotics to the food chain.

Post reply on HN