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.
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.
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.
Make sure to never use a slow release formulation, those are terrible and basically a guarantee of morning grogginess.
I use liquid to get it absorbed as fast as possible, a low dose (1mg) and my sleep doctor also recommended to take it as early as will work for me (even up to 4 hours before sleep he said, but I usually take it about 1.5-2h before which works for me).
His theory is that you need it all to be metabolised before the midpoint of sleep, whereas slow release keeps going past that so you’ll always feel groggy. Also potentially just a larger dose will do that.
What dose are you using? Most OTC melatonin supplements are sold in a 3 or 5mg dose, while the correct one is ~0.3mg or even lower for some people. High dose may be related to the fogginess.
Yeah, I'm familiar with that, and I try to break them into small pieces, but sometimes I just pop one. I always get the smallest dose I can find. I don't really use it except for jetlag anyway.
same here.
I use 5HTP instead, apparently the same chemical pathway just goes in at a different point. no fog in the morning at all. Nice and sharp, feel good.
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.
