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  • Hacker News
  • In holistic circles, people swear by magnesium. Magnesium glycinate in particular has worked really well for me. It makes sense, because magnesium is a co-factor for converting tryptophan into serotonin, which is turned into the hormone melatonin. So, you could try supporting your body's natural production of sleep hormones by ensuring you have enough available tryptophan and magnesium in your diet.
    by avesi
  • A couple of years ago, my wife (around 40 at the time) was struggling to sleep (she had very light sleep and woke up in the middle of the night for no reason). She tried most of the things everybody recommends, melatonin, slow release, Gaba, magnesium, etc. The only thing that helped was ZMA (a compound body builders use with Magnesium and Zinc).

    No idea why, but while the Magnesium alone didn't do anything, the ZMA helped her.

    Nowadays we always have a bottle by the bedside. I use it sparingly whenever I want to get deep sleep. What I like vs Melatonin is that when I take Melatonin I dream a lot and I dont feel that "rested" next morning. I even wake up groggy. With ZMA, I sleep very deep, like shut my eyes and suddenly I am wake next day. I feel way more rested.

    by xtracto
  • I've noticed if I use the f.lux feature for just 15 minutes I begin to get tired at night. Blue light is a hell of a drug.
    by msuniverse2026
  • Could it just be dosage? Commonly found dosage is 10-20x what you'd actually secrete and IIRC absorption is actually quite good.
    by redrove
  • My understanding is that melatonin can overload certain receptors and cause an issue with fogginess since it works directly on the brain. 5HTP is more broad and is “gated“ on the same metabolic pathway, so cannot overload the system the way melatonin does.
    by dripdry45
  • Even 200 mcg is enough to give me brain fog. I stick with 100 mcg unless I'm really having a hard time falling asleep.
    by senderista
  • As with so many experiments, the study itself is clear and testing something valid, but when it gets shared somewhere like reddit/HN/Facebook etc. everyone takes the broadest possible, unintended reading.

    - study: we tested specifically healthy young adults and found melatonin may have a negative effect on this cohort. We make zero claims about any other cohort.

    - every lay person reading the study, of any age: scientists just proved melatonin makes me dumb in the morning! Oh no!

    by esperent
  • Not sleeping impairs my morning cognition - a lot. Melatonin is part of the rotating stacks I use to mitigate insomnia.

    My mornings have always been impaired, going back to pre-school. Meds don't make my mornings any worse than my baseline.

    by WarOnPrivacy
  • What else is part of your rotating stacks? Asking as someone who melatonin doesn't seem to help much
    by johntash
  • As a long term insomniac the head line result is not surprising. My overall experience with "sleep aides" is they all lead to impairments in morning cognition. The worst of which don't last just the morning... (seroquel, I'm pointing at you...) Melatonin is surprisingly powerful for a hormone / supplement. For me, it hits like a truck, and I find it strong enough that I had to stop taking it.

    I'd be careful with the methodology here. There's been research that shows that most melatonin supplements are megadosed, with something like the "physiological dosage range" being 1 - 2 micrograms (ug.) So I'd hope the researchers got a trustworthy source for their tablets. It seems to me that with such a low dosage range you don't have much margin to avoid errors.

    I think when it comes to sleep problems the worst possible place to start is with pills. Pills quickly lead to dependence and a lot of them either stop working or introduce so many side effects that there's little "therapeutic benefit." I think the right approach for insomnia is to focus on improving overall health. A lot of symptoms people go to the doctor for in that category are due to life-style factors. So if you maintain healthy habits you don't have to end up on 10 different pills just to function...

    It's a slippery slope, trust me on that.

    by Uptrenda
  • Yeah, sure.

    I would love to find a natural or lifestyle remedy to common RLS or PLMD symptoms that I get from time to time. The problem is that for some people it's impossible to identify what are the triggers and sometimes it's just genetics you have no control over.

    But sure, do tell people to avoid doctors and make them suffer even though there are drug remedies that don't cause dependence and augumentation.

    by margor
  • My understanding is that you ought to take melatonin in small doses (0.3 or so) an hour or two before sleep in order to get tired, whereupon you sleep (normally, ish, unless you take too much and then you get crazy dreams or sleep paralysis). If I take it and go right to bed I always wake up still in the 'window' of its effect.
    by ajkjk
  • I was taking small doses of melatonin before go to sleep for a year or two. To help me begin to sleep. I have a tinnitus. Usually I have a deep sleep. I can get sleep, I can sleep all night without problems. it's only the first hour that can be problematic for me. I stoped like half year, and I don't having problems to sleep.
    by Zardoz84
  • Hard 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.
    by gwern
  • The study is on "healthy young adults". How much improvement would you expect on someone who is already "healthy"? It's not like they are going to ascend and become superhuman.
    by ororroro
  • Anecdote - I've used it dozens of times and I'm always foggy in the AM, so I avoid it if I have to be sharp the next morning. Perhaps it's a coincidence and this study is flawed, but I can believe it pretty easily.
    by colordrops
  • 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

    by cmdoptesc
  • Next, the same experiment could be done with individuals who would be more likely to use melatonin supplements, or even just a broader group than "healthy young adults". I feel that the starting point of the experiment is a bit flawed since there's a high chance these healthy young adults don't have the problem the supplements are designed for. I'm not surprised about "We found no significant differences between the melatonin and sleep groups on any of our sleep measures" for these people.

    Personal experience: I have mild insomnia* and I sometimes take melatonin. It generally does help, but I can be groggy in the morning, if I took it too late in the evening. Happens sometimes. But for me, it's so much better to be sometimes a bit groggy for a short while, compared to being completely exhausted from sleep deprivation all day.

    *I was a startup founder for 10 years and practically did not sleep during that time. Even years after that life, it feels like my body is not responding to melatonin that much. Or my body is not secreting enough itself. Who knows.

    by s-ww
  • Wouldnt you be less efficient with less sleep ? For a startup you should improve sleep quality
    by ttoinou
  • Exactly. The relevant comparison for someone with insomnia isn't melatonin vs perfect natural sleep, it's melatonin plus some morning grogginess vs not getting enough sleep at all
    by HexPhantom
  • > I feel that the starting point of the experiment is a bit flawed

    This is from the first paragraph in the abstract:

    > Exogenous melatonin has been shown to improve sleep in individuals with sleep disorders, such as insomnia and delayed sleep phase disorder. However, research on the effect of exogenous melatonin on sleep in healthy young adults is limited.

    by extrabajs
  • Tangentially: as a 'young adult' I was a typical 'night owl'. Cognitivly I peaked between 10pm and 3am, typically slept from 4am to 11am. When I got kids and a more 'regular' job, I was forced to change to a more normal schedule. The transition from 'owl' to 'lark' was not easy. It took about 7 years. These days, I peak 7am to 1pm.
    by PeterStuer
  • But how's this related to melatonin? Did you use it on those 7 years to progressively switch?
    by knocte
  • 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
    by bodash
  • I too found myself most productive after 9 pm.

    But when I moved on my own I found that it shifted quite naturally. I'd wake up earlier and go to bed earlier, and then productive peak shifted to be during working hours.

    I think for me the key factor was primarily that the house was quiet after 9 pm.

    When I was on my own it was quiet all day.

    by magicalhippo
  • This thesis appears to be related or the underlying research:

    https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/51312

    Indicates 2mg and 5mg were given along with the placebo. While these are common dosages available in the US, these are higher dosages than recommended by at least some sleep experts. The thesis doesn't seem to differentiate between the dosages when evaluating cognitive processes.

    Now I want to evaluate my sleep stack against morning cognition.

    by mutagen
  • Coffee isn't mentioned. Morning cognition could be impacted by whether subjects take caffeine before starting tasks.
    by turtleyacht
  • Seriously, separating the 2mg and 5mg groups would make this a lot more informative
    by HexPhantom
  • Thanks for finding that!

    I apologize for not reading the full study before submitting it on Hacker News and for the misleading headline on the frontpage given the context of the dosages used, I really should have noticed that the link only contained an abstract.

    by bohaska
  • I take 300mcg when I’m having a hard time getting to sleep or if I’ve had a lot of caffeine. Mostly because Scott Alexander told me to.
    by wincy