Melatonin

[Gilgamesh]

Slacker, I tried 100 mg last night. Helped a bit, I think, but here I am, awake, feeling a little yucky. Just a little, but still. I'll continue the experiment. I'm on the road so not great control conditions, but I'll learn something over time.

"I live to serve." Hey, we all do!

ERK, interesting article, thanks. I need to go through my CRON-O-Meter data. I went from low-ish fat to moderate fat (35-40% or so by calories) around the time I developed sleep problems, and then slowly increased the percentage fat by calories. Maybe low-carb (even low-ish) is even worse than some of us think. I wish -- and I know have lots of company in this wish! -- there were more well-done research on low-carb diets with 1) low protein and 2) good fats!

G

[KatieS]

Does anyone wake with a headache after taking melatonin 1mg?

Yes, i have a headache the next morning even after Source Natural's 0.1mg sublingual. Not worth the hangover for me.

Also, I found progesterone to be a sedative.

aha!! bingo, i cant tolerate progesterone at all.
took 0.25mg melatonin last night and still woke with a headache.
hmmmm....common mechanism?

Only found on PubMed the interaction of the rat's pineal gland's melatonin and progesterone altering in the ovarian luteal phase, no mechanism that I could discover.

Funny how neither of us had a menopausal hot flash.

[Julie G]

Katie & Stavia, I wonder how magnesium affects you?

ERK, great article- thanks. Per this information, elevated cortisol seems to accompany a very low carb diet. I'm curious if other folks are experiencing this phenomenon? My LC diet is still fairly high in carbs (90 grams of primarily non-starchy veg) and my cortisol pattern, as measured by a 24 hour saliva test is low/normal. My gut feeling is that any elevation in cortisol would be detrimental to E4 carriers.

G, I feel for you. When I don't sleep I have a hard time even functioning the next day. If you suspect your LC diet is to blame, why not trial a HC diet? Of course, caloric restriction also raises cortisol. Could be a confounding variable. Tricky.

[marty]

I can't comment on Consumer Lab specifically. It may be credible. Beware that some "labs" are non-existent or are paid by the manufacturing or importing company for an endorsement. If there is advertising on the website that says it did the analysis, be very suspicious.

Another concern is that many brands buy their melatonin from the manufacturer with the lowest bid. Each batch the company receives can be very different. The lowest bidder may change each quarter. There are a lot of variables.

Let me take the example of fish oil. There may be a weight on the label that states what is in each capsule. And there may be a breakdown of DHA and EPA. How would you possibly know if that's true.

As Al Capone said about his bootleg booze, it's not supposed to be good, it's supposed to be bought.

Am I cynical? I suppose.

consumerlab.com goes some distant to help identify supplement brands that pass some independent testing (by supplement). In the case of melatonin they checked for lead contamination and that the supplement has the amount it claims. Also that it disintegrated properly. A good number of brands passed at least that much testing.

[marty]

Here are a few comments.

Cortisol levels should be at their peak in the morning. Sleep apnea, chronic insomnia and a longer fast can elevate them. And the normal for an individual can vary a lot. Lots of possibilities.

Controlled studies of melatonin for chronic insomnia show only a small benefit. The average advantage over placebo is about 7 minutes to sleep time, and that was when we knew the subjects actually truly received the real thing in the real amount. But placebo does help a lot. Melatonin is a weak hypnotic even in high doses.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl ... ne.0063773

There is reason to have reduced confidence in time released products due to variable absorption. But the whole premise of using OTC melatonin is problematic for the reasons I mentioned already.

Your mention of oxycodone is very interesting. Years ago codeine, oxycodone and hydrocodone were used to treat excessive sleepiness, particularly in narcolepsy. Many, but not all, got a paradoxical stimulating effect from those drugs with an improvement in alertness. It is a common story to hear people who have become addicts say that hydrocodone improved their energy levels and their productivity. Under experimental conditions and compared to placebo, these drugs tend to cause more superficial and fragmented sleep. But that's obviously not true for everyone.

Marty

Why do you think your AM cortisol level is high?
Back to melatonin: I've tried very high-dose melatonin (up to 10 mg. at one point -- 3.x mg. at bedtime, again at hour 2 or so, and again and hour 4 or so.). No help, no headaches. Nothing good or bad.

I've never trusted time-release formulations of anything. Gut differences are enormous.

G

P.S. The best sleep solution (aside from pigging out at night) I ever had was 5 mg. oxycodone 5-7 hours before bedtime. Curious. Had some for post-surg. pain. Did this on my fasting days (every 3 days). Here in the US one can't talk about opioids without getting surprised cat jumping up a meter reactions from people -- above all doctors. Oh well.

[cdamaden]

Somewhat off topic, but I started taking melatonin to help ease my reflux. Here are a few studies:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/717460_5
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18616070

(I don't know if the melatonin helped but with some additional dietary changes of low fiber and avoiding starches (a SIBO prevention diet) my reflux is back under control.)

[Stavia]

Marty - the info re different batches being different could account for my headache since I started a new huge (300tabs) bottle of source naturals 1mg melatonin. Even a quarter mg is now giving me a headache whereas the last bottle didnt.
I'm going to throw it away. I'm sleeping well.

Julie, I don't notice any appreciable difference with magnesium at night. But I take it anyway becos it may be generally a good idea. Katie?

[Gilgamesh]

Marty,

Thanks for your thoughts. For various reasons I'm not concerned about purity problems with the melatonin products I've used, but I agree with and keep in my mind all your other concerns very much. I use melatonin mostly because I have tons of it lying around and I'm a bit convinced that the probability of benefit is greater than the probability of harm based on the rodent dementia model studies -- VERY weak evidence of benefit of course (but I see little risk to small doses). Otherwise I use it for circadian resyncing, for which the evidence of benefit is substantial, and is a use much needed by me because I'm switching circadian cycles a lot.

Interesting about opioids. They would never help me taken at bedtime; I'd just want to get back to the novel I'm writing! But, every three days, oxycodone taken late afternoon-ish, helped me quite a bit with sleep (and helped that novel...). For a while I was worried I was going to drift into addiction, but I settled into a pattern of 5 mg (actually, 3 mg, in the end, which worked just as well) every three days. It was a life safer. But I could never get any opioids in the US, from a doctor, for the usage to which I'd want to put them, unfortunately. I brought it up a couple times and just got an infantilizing "OMG! What about Prince?! Your life will be destroyed!" reaction.

G

[KatieS]

Stavia, I stopped the magnesium theonate at night as it had a potential interaction with rousvastatin. Now that I'm off rousvastatin (doubled ALT to 90 & possible cognitive issues with LDL of 56 ), I was just about to restart when I read of Julie's side effect with magnesium. The magnesium theonate did seem to be slightly sedative, but I don't seem to need it for sleep.

[TheBrain]

I have been taking Douglas Laboratories' time-release melatonin, 3 mg. I have not experienced any benefit from taking it at that dose. My chronic insomnia has continued. In recent months, I weaned down from taking 2 mg Klonopin in the middle of the night to get back to sleep down to 1 1/8 mg. I am determined not to increase my dose. I want to get off of Klonopin entirely. I know it's anticholinergic.

I also take PharmaGaba and L-Tryptophan in the middle of the night to get back to sleep.

This past weekend, a friend told me that she and her sister started taking 10 mg melatonin at bedtime and are now sleeping well. Both of them have had terrible insomnia for a long time.

So, after doing some reading online about dosing and determining that 10 mg won't kill me, I decided to first try 6 mg. That did nothing. Last night, I took 9 mg. I slept longer until waking up (4 1/2 hours instead of 3 to 3 1/2 hours) and then when I went back to sleep, I got 3 1/2 hours more sleep. So I slept 8 hours total.

Today, I'm feeling drugged and don't feel like doing anything except for what I call miscellaneous other. At least I don't feel malaise, which is what happens after I don't get enough sleep for days on end. I'll give it another go tonight and probably beyond that. Maybe I'll adapt to the dosage. I don't have a headache, as others have reported.

My former functional medicine practitioner recommended the brand I'm taking. He's picky about supplement brands, so I'm trusting his judgment on this (even though he dumped me, which was, of course, bad judgment!).

I wonder if there are insomnia genes, though I understand that insomnia has many potential causes. My father suffered from horrible insomnia for decades before he died of kidney cancer at age 71. He never did anything about it, other than suffer. My first horrible bout of insomnia occurred some number of months after his death. Maybe I'm carrying on the family tradition.

A while back DanH44 pointed me toward the possibility of my gut dysbiosis causing the insomnia. My father almost certainly had gut dysbiosis as well. Maybe that's the connection. I've ordered the Restore product discussed in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2846. I'm hopeful that it will restore my gut microbiome and heal several health issues I have, including the insomnia.