4 ms·
This thesis appears to be related or the underlying research: https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/51312 https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/51312 Indicates 2mg and 5mg were given
by mutagen 2mo ago
This thesis appears to be related or the underlying research:
https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/51312 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.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- DANmode 2mo ago5 is almost universally too much. 4 is almost universally too much.. 3 is the most I’ve ever recommended. More than enough.
- pazimzadeh 2mo agoless than 1 is plenty
- alfiedotwtf 2mo ago5 as in milligrams?! I’ve found 10mg is sometimes just enough, but 20-30mg is where I actually feel a noticeable difference
- bardsore 2mo agoThat is an extreme amount
- DANmode 2mo agoI’d be looking at other problems. That’s…an extreme amount, as the other commenter said.
- stephen_g 2mo agoI assume this is with tablets? In which case I think maybe try liquid solution instead? Sounds like either the tablets aren’t being absorbed at all or they are wildly off in the concentration (which is common because it’s so unregulated) Just 1mg in liquid form is plenty for me, and that’s as someone who has had severe sleep onset difficulty for as long as I remember before I started using melatonin. I was told to hold the liquid under my tongue to absorb for a while before swallowing. I get it in 10mg/mL and it comes with a little oral syringe that you draw up 0.1mL with.
- alfiedotwtf 2mo agoYeah, tablet. Though medication is highly regulated in Australia, I might try liquid form next time I go for a prescription (anything over 2mg is regulated here). Thanks!
- kylecazar 2mo agoI take a 3mg every night, but I've read that independent labs have studied the common OTC brands and found wildly different Melatonin content than advertised. So I really don't know how much I take.
- listless 2mo agoI take 1.25 every night. I titrated down off of three and ima keep going. I cannot tell the difference between those doses. Both make me very drowsy.
- DANmode 2mo ago83% less to 478% more than the dosage advertised on the label, based on these studies. Because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates melatonin as a dietary supplement rather than a prescription drug, manufacturers have less strict oversight. Independently tested brands remain supreme. Often not even the expensive brands.
- wincy 2mo agoI 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.
- mutagen 2mo agoYeah I'm in the 300 mcg camp, I take a time release formulation, try to take it early but often it isn't far off bedtime.
- avarun 2mo agoWhich specific product do you take? Do you have a link?
- gleenn 2mo agoI end up biting a lot of pills to get around that dose. I definitely always felt groggy until I dialed down the dose to just right, and it works perfectly: I fall asleep far quicker and more assuredly, and I don't feel to groggy. I can't believe they sell pills as large as they do, what other medication varies in dosage as much?
- tpm 2mo agoI suspect the dosage and absorption isn't fully understood yet or very individual. For me some 2mg pills work fine and other 3mg pills don't; currently I use 4mg time-release and it's mostly fine. 1 mg is definitely not enough for me. I would be groggy a few hours after taking the pill but not in the morning.
- ohthehugemanate 2mo agoSince they're not regulated as medication, melatonin pills have no guarantees about actual melatonin content. In studies, the vast majority of supplement labels are inaccurate.
- 2mo ago
- turtleyacht 2mo agoCoffee isn't mentioned. Morning cognition could be impacted by whether subjects take caffeine before starting tasks.
- HexPhantom 2mo agoGood point. For regular coffee drinkers, testing an hour after waking without their usual caffeine could be its own cognitive impairment experiment
- lostlogin 2mo agoIt’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.
- epihelix 2mo agoAs 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.
- bityard 2mo agoEveryone 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.
- hinkley 2mo agoLong ago when I paid attention to this, the wisdom was to watch out because most melatonin pills are targeted to geriatric patients. Old folks need a significant boost to their melatonin to deal with eroding sleep quality, not a little hit of it. So as a 30 year old or younger you want a fraction of what grandad is taking.
- HexPhantom 2mo agoYou'd expect the standard OTC dose to be a sensible starting point, not potentially several times more than a younger person needs
- hinkley 2mo agoYou wouldn’t, if you remembered that medically speaking, younger people “needing” melatonin pills has been pretty fringe until very recently, and the number of young people who need it is still comparatively small. You can find smaller pills. But you might have to try several chains or order online to get them.
- sersi 2mo agoIt's been the standard recommendation for dealing with jetlag in the last 15-20 years. And usually people who regularly experience jetlag due to repeated international professional trips are not elderly.
- ajb 2mo agoThere is a rumour that the high doses are because the correct dose was under patent. I can only find that in a comment here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th... but I could have sworn it was in the main article when I first read it. (If so that makes it less likely, because the author revises his articles for correctness) That (albeit long) article is worth reading. For example, it explains that melatonin is a phase signal, so being saturated with too much melatonin actually makes the signal less clear (as well as potentially causing other issues).
- znpy 2mo agoIndeed the best melatonin supplement i took was a small spray bottle where each hit was 500mg
- layer8 2mo agoI hope you mean µg.
- HexPhantom 2mo agoSeriously, separating the 2mg and 5mg groups would make this a lot more informative
- gojomo 2mo agoAnd having a 0.3mg (300mcg) group - the dose many meticulous online self-experimenters have found sufficient, a mere 15% of their lowest-tested 2mg. Would a headline "morning coffee found to cause stomach problems and anxiety" be reasonable, if the smallest dose tested was 7 cups – and that dosage fact was omitted from the attached abstract/story?
- bohaska 2mo agoThanks 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.
- koliber 2mo agoI read a while back that our brains produce roughly 0.3 mg of melatonin when signaling us to go to sleep. When I occasionally do use melatonin I split a 1mg pill into half or thirds. I find that it works well enough to help me fall asleep. Wondering how the study would look if hwy used 1/2 mg doses.
- mettamage 2mo agoGo 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 countries that do this well. I'm simply not changing a winning team. But I'd love to hear from other people that believe they found a good melatonin supply in a country. I'm curious.
- budsniffer952 2mo ago[flagged]
- rusk 2mo agoPharma and Healthcare was the implication I believe. The US approach to these things has a bad reputation internationally though I am informed that it’s an amazing system if you’re rich.
- mft_ 2mo agoLet’s not conflate US pharma with their healthcare more generally. The US is dominant in pharmaceutical and biotech, and FDA is generally excellent as a regulator, despite (IMO) sometimes being too conservative and resistant to any ideas not gestated within the agency. There are weird quirks (like the wide and wacky dosages of melatonin available over the counter, in this example) but most countries have such quirks.
- budsniffer952 2mo agoI love that people have developed a "sleep stack" without ever even knowing if what they take is improving the effects of sleep.
- toilet 2mo agoPeople would rather get a wifi connected smart bed and track their sleep stats with a smart watch than put their phone away and read a book before bed
- fragmede 2mo agoTo 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.
- hackable_sand 2mo agoBetter sleep than what? Humans have been sleeping for at least 400 years
- efficax 2mo agoat least!
- bluefirebrand 2mo agoI wonder what the actual sleep quality of people 400 years ago looked like My guess would be "not great"
- huehehue 2mo agoI get what you're saying, but let's not pretend the modern world isn't meaningfully different. Artificial light is a big factor, yes. So are odd and constantly changing work hours from a world that now operates 24/7. So is the common expectation of monophasic sleep in general. So is travel and jet lag that we now have to endure, and dietary changes, and stimulants especially for folks who just don't even have 8 uninterrupted hours available for sleep. So are dramatic global temperature changes. The list goes on, and there is more data in this paper https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11152632/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11152632/ I can hardly blame anyone for wanting to "hack" or "optimize" their sleep. It seems more necessary now than it has ever been.
- philwelch 2mo agoThose are an order of magnitude higher doses than recommended.