From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Sep 14 2000 - 08:36:48 MDT
On Wednesday, September 13, 2000 7:06 AM David Lubkin
lubkin@unreasonable.com wrote:
>> Anyone have any direct experience and/or understanding of the effects
(+/-) of supplemental >> use of melatonin?
>
> My teenage daughter and I both use melatonin occasionally to normalize our
> sleep cycles.
>
> What I've read is that the appropriate dose varies by as much as 2000 to
1.
> The recommendation I followed was to start with 3 mg, and see what it does
> to you. Then either increase or decrease from there.
>
> In our cases, with 3 mg, we each slept 12+ hours. My daughter found that
> 200 mcg was the right dose for her; I take 1 mg. Rather than taking it
> every day, we wait until we find we're not getting enough sleep, and then
> take it until our sleep cycle is back to normal.
>
> NEVER take melatonin while the sun is out. You can screw up your system.
> (The body's own production of melatonin is triggered by low-light levels.)
> I find the best time to take it is about two hours before you want to go
to
> sleep. But I've also read that you shouldn't take it after midnight.
>
> There are now press reports that melatonin use blocks stage-4 sleep. I'm
> skeptical of this, and want to find the actual studies.
I haven't heard of that.
I used to use melatonin every night -- about a year or more ago. I decided
to use it only when I knew I'd have a sleep problem, such as when traveling,
and that works much better for me. (Probably a dosage thing for me.)
Another thing I noticed when I experimented a while back with SAMe is that
by taking SAMe in the morning, I did not need melatonin at all. SAMe and
melatonin seem to convert into each other.
There is a lot of stuff on both melatonin and SAMe at the the Life Extension
Foundation's web site -- http://www.lef.org/ I don't know why more list
members don't stop by there.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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