Melatonin
poopylungstuffing
Veteran
Joined: 8 Mar 2007
Age: 48
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,714
Location: Snapdragon Ridge
14 Nov 2007, 3:27 am
Melatonin has really weird side effects for me, and i don't really like it. It has caused me have these strange lucid dreams where I am wide awake in my house and um....I will think that i am awake and things will happen and I won't realise till later that it was just a dream....
Either that or I will be really buzzed and unable to sleep. The lucid dream stuff happend when I took a really really big dose out of frustration of not being able to fall asleep.
The lucid dream experience was really psychedellic and bizarre....but not very fun at all.
I have a whole bottle of the stuff...but am afraid to take it.
14 Nov 2007, 7:44 am
It is 3:30 am and I am wide awake. For some unknown reason I just woke up at 2:30 am after going to bed at 10:30 pm. This is the first time sleep disruption has happened in months since I started the calisthenics program. Throughout the day I could feel the onset of a meltdown as my thoughts shifted into recursive memories. Perhaps if I had taken some melatonin I would not be wide awake now writing this post to WP. Would love to hear if it has worked for anyone else before I buy some.
Problem is if you wait until 3:30 to take it, it may mess up your sleep rhythms. Best to take it every night at the same time - about 30 minutes or 1 hour before bedtime. Otherwise it can cause groggyness the next day. At least in my experience.
14 Nov 2007, 2:21 pm
My daughter's neurologist recommended it and now we're all taking it. I recommend starting with one mg, not 3, though. I ran out of ones and took a 3 last night. (I had also been having trouble sleeping.) and this morning when my alarm clock went off I just heard music in my dream! I overslept. So, I'm going back to one tonight.
Good luck.
14 Nov 2007, 2:24 pm
Either that or I will be really buzzed and unable to sleep. The lucid dream stuff happend when I took a really really big dose out of frustration of not being able to fall asleep.
The lucid dream experience was really psychedellic and bizarre....but not very fun at all.
I have a whole bottle of the stuff...but am afraid to take it.
Oh no. My daughter has been talking and even crying in her sleep. She will sit up and cry and I have to reassure her- having a conversation with her as she sleeps- that everything is alright.
She has always done this once in a while, so I thought it was stress, not the melatonin. Now I really wonder, because of your experience.
14 Nov 2007, 8:21 pm
Either that or I will be really buzzed and unable to sleep. The lucid dream stuff happend when I took a really really big dose out of frustration of not being able to fall asleep.
The lucid dream experience was really psychedellic and bizarre....but not very fun at all.
I have a whole bottle of the stuff...but am afraid to take it.
The trick is to take the minimum dose necessary and take it when you are just starting to get sleepy to help speed up the process. Use it to gently adjust your natural sleep rhythm. Don’t use it to knock yourself out or you’ll be sorry. When I first started I made the mistake of taking too much and it made me dream so hard that I woke up in a puddle of drool and then felt really woozy and light headed the next day.
14 Nov 2007, 8:29 pm
She has always done this once in a while, so I thought it was stress, not the melatonin. Now I really wonder, because of your experience.
Yes, that's a side effect if you take too much. Chances are she doesn't even remember.
I had that happen to me. My uncle was visiting and he walked into my room in the middle of the night and asked me if I was all right. I asked him why he just woke me up and he said I was making whimpering noises and occasionally yelling nonsense. I didn't remember any of it.
14 Nov 2007, 11:57 pm
We started to give my seven-year old son melatonin at his doctor's suggestion... 1 mg before bed. Once I noticed him sitting up in bed talking excitedly, then a week later when I picked him up at school, he started talking about a dream he had the night before, how it was "breaking into the safe of his mind" all day at school and distracting him from his work. We reduced his intake to .5 mg and haven't had any more incidents. It is amazing how fast it knocks him out - we'd never had a kid who would just quietly go to sleep in 20 minutes after lights out.
I will say, though, I have tried to skip a night here and there, because some people think you should not use it everyday - and the first night we skip a pill, he is awake for over an hour after we turn out the lights. The pills just don't seem to have much residual effect. Maybe that's a good thing?
15 Nov 2007, 3:42 am
Another thing worth trying and that I always found helpful - was to eat one or two banana's when I woke up - banana's seemed to help me get back to sleep. I think there is something in banana's that promotes sleep.
Bannanas have high levels of potasium,which can help with restless legs and cramping at night and they are high in seritonin which is the percurser to melatonin.I dont know how fast the break down process is...maybe different for each individual.I often find just eating anything helps me sleep.I think my blood suger dropping to low will wake me up.
I am taking 5-HTP which converts most easily into seritonin and melitonin and I do think it helps me sleep.(So does my Effexor,which is an SSRI but I am trying to come off that soon and alternating between the two)
_________________
Just because one plane is flying out of formation, doesn't mean the formation is on course....R.D.Lang
Visit my wool sculpture blog
http://eyesoftime.blogspot.com/
15 Nov 2007, 3:56 am
Another thing worth trying and that I always found helpful - was to eat one or two banana's when I woke up - banana's seemed to help me get back to sleep. I think there is something in banana's that promotes sleep.
Bannanas have high levels of potasium,which can help with restless legs and cramping at night and they are high in seritonin which is the percurser to melatonin.I dont know how fast the break down process is...maybe different for each individual.I often find just eating anything helps me sleep.I think my blood suger dropping to low will wake me up.
I am taking 5-HTP which converts most easily into seritonin and melitonin and I do think it helps me sleep.(So does my Effexor,which is an SSRI but I am trying to come off that soon and alternating between the two)
Glad to hear about bananas. My son has been complaining about leg-cramping at night. I thought he was just attention-seeking.
_________________
There they go, and I must hasten after them, for I am their leader.
15 Nov 2007, 2:07 pm
I give it to my son (9) every night and he's had a great experience with it. He takes 0.5mg at 7pm. At 8 pm it's time for bed and he's asleep in 10 mins. No side effects. It's just enough to help his body to relax without overmedicating and him feeling groggy or having weird dreams. He sleeps 10-11 hours a night.
17 Nov 2007, 6:37 pm
Following the advice given on this thread, I purchased a bottle containing 120 tablets of 1 mg Melatonin tablets from GNC and took one pill last night before going to bed. Miracles of miracles! I slept a straight 9 hours and feel like the meltdowns that have been plaguing me all this week might have been licked.
10 minutes after taking the Melatonin, I could feel my head becoming a little heavier. By 20 minutes, I was feeling that good drowsy feeling which signaled that it was time to go to sleep. When I climbed into bed, it just felt right and comfortable to be lying down; there was none of the frustrating anguish that I was forcing my body to do something that my mind did not want to do. Within a little while of hitting the sack, I was asleep. 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep! For 5 nights in a row I have suffered from various forms of sleep disruption. Either I could not fall asleep or I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. It is a relief to finally get the sleep I need. You would think that having slept so well I would be full of energy but I would actually describe my state of mind as peaceful exhaustion. It feels like some parts of my brain came to a stop and rested only last night after days of furious and futile activity.
Now I have to decide if I should take Melatonin every night or reserve it only for the nights when I feel I might need it. I do not believe in popping pills and do not take anything else beyond the plant rich diet that I consume. But the effects of getting the sleep I need has made me such a happy man, I might just have to make an exception for Melatonin.
18 Nov 2007, 7:24 pm
For all you people living in countries where Big Brother won't let you buy melatonin: Hops have something that hits the melatonin receptors:
Hypothermic effects of hops are antagonized with the competitive melatonin receptor antagonist luzindole in mice.
Butterweck V, Brattstroem A, Grundmann O, Koetter U.
College of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Florida, Gainesville, PO Box 100494, FL 32610, USA. [email protected]
Hops (Humulus lupulus, Cannabinaceae) has been used in traditional European medicine as a mild sedative for the treatment of anxiety, nervousness, and insomnia. However, there has been little information available about the underlying sleep inducing mechanism of hops. We have investigated the effects of a hops extract on the rectal body temperature in mice. Hops extract (250 mg kg(-1)) significantly decreased body temperature in male BL6/C57J mice (DeltaT -0.75 +/- 0.07 degrees C) 2 h after oral administration. The effects of the plant extract were comparable with melatonin (50 mg kg(-1); DeltaT -0.66 +/- 0.06 degrees C; 2 h after i.p. injection). The hypothermic effects of melatonin and hops extract were antagonized with the competitive melatonin receptor antagonist luzindole. Thus, our data suggests that the hypothermic--and therefore the sleep-inducing--effects of hops extract are possibly mediated through activation of melatonin receptors.
19 Nov 2007, 6:34 pm
For three days now I have been taking Melatonin. After the first time, which came on the heels of many nights of sleep disruption, the effects are more muted. I do fall asleep more easily but waking up in the wee hours of the morning still happens. Although with Melatonin, I do not wake up fully. For the last two nights, at about 4-6 am, I seem to be in the unfathomable space between sleep and time consciousness - my eyes are closed and I am sleeping, but in a dreamlike way I am aware that it is early morning. No complaints from me though, this is a significant improvement from waking up at 3 am in the morning and finding that my brain is fully activated.
There is another effect that Melatonin has on me: throughout the day I felt very mellow, rested and lazy. It felt like I could sit in a chair, stare out in the space, and watch as the butterflies dance from flower to flower and tree to tree amidst the many changing hues of tropical green. It is a calm, peaceful, almost sedate feeling that lasts throughout the day. This I like very much as it is a vast improvement from feeling that irascible, unscratchable itch which has torments me when sleep disruption occurs.
20 Nov 2007, 7:05 pm
Most auties don't produce much melatonin, and those that produce the least have more symptoms, especially with regards to verbal communication and play:
Nocturnal excretion of 6-sulphatoxymelatonin in children and adolescents with autistic disorder.
Tordjman S, Anderson GM, Pichard N, Charbuy H, Touitou Y.
Center for Scientific Research, Unité de Recherche Mixte 7593, Vurnérabilité, Adaptation et Psychopathologie, Hôpital Pitié-Salpétrière, Rennes, France. [email protected]
BACKGROUND: Many studies in autistic disorder report sleep problems and altered circadian rhythms, suggesting abnormalities in melatonin physiology. Additionally, melatonin, a pineal gland hormone produced from serotonin, is of special interest in autistic disorder given reported alterations in central and peripheral serotonin neurobiology. METHODS: Nocturnal urinary excretion of 6-sulphatoxymelatonin was measured by radioimmunoassay in groups of children and adolescents with autistic disorder (n = 49) and normal control individuals (n = 88) matched on age, sex, and Tanner stage of puberty. RESULTS: Nocturnal 6-sulphatoxymelatonin excretion rate was significantly and substantially lower in patients with autism than in normal controls (mean +/- SEM, .75 +/- .11 vs. 1.80 +/- .17 microg/hr, p =.0001), and was significantly negatively correlated with severity of autistic impairments in verbal communication and play (p < .05). CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate clearly that nocturnal production of melatonin is reduced in autism. Further research is warranted in order to understand the mechanisms underlying the lower melatonin production, to assess the impact of altered melatonin on the pathophysiology and behavioral expression of autistic disorder, and to determine the utility of melatonin administration in individuals with autism.
