I should note that my sleep issues are completely under control now, primarily due to the light therapy, as well as making sure I wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends. I now sleep like a normal, healthy person.
For a long time, especially when I was living in a dim basement, I had bouts of non-24 hour sleep-wake rhythm and I even had periods of irregular sleep-wake rhythm, which was a nightmare. So the light therapy etc. has taken me a long way. Fixing my sleep also played a large role in fixing my depression (and vice versa), since the comorbidity between depression and circadian rhythm disorders is very high (I think I remember >50%)
As for melatonin, I was never able to tell for sure if it was having an effect, but it definitely wasn’t solving my sleep issues as the other stuff did. Maybe there’s some biological variability in response to it or something. I did try different doses, up to the sedative level, and it never really helped. I’m glad some people find it helpful though.
There is, in fact, a sedative level, and higher doses aren’t less effective, they just induce more side effects, from what I understand. I tried every dose under the sun, including tiny ones. The effect was always weak at best.
Scott does write “A meta-analysis of dose-response relationships concurred, finding a plateau effect around 0.3 mg, with doses after that having no more efficacy, but worse side effects” but that doesn’t mean that higher doses keep their efficiency.
His article for example goes on to say “And Pires et al studying 22-24 year olds found that 0.3 mg worked better than 1.0.” Which is likely
Honestly, it’s a little strange that light therapy would help and melatonin not (since light therapy shifts circadian rhythms via [probably] lowering your melatonin levels in the morning). It’s good you have your sleep issues under control.
The effect size of melatonin use is usually pretty small. I think most studies say it shifts your cycle by 10-20 minutes. As I tended to go to bed an hour or two later every night, this was not enough.
As for light therapy, it’s not strange that it would have a different effect. Light stimulates a neural pathway going straight to your suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which is the core circadian clock in your brain. (Melatonin is not involved in this, though melatonin is affected downstream.) Melatonin, on the other hand, is released by the pineal gland and is used to regulate the SCN (among other things), but it’s not involved directly in the core timing mechanisms of the SCN.
Melatonin actually causes a shift much larger than ten to twenty minutes -when taken early. Melatonin taken in the morning causes a large shift to delay the cycle (this can cause a shift of several hours). Melatonin taken after several hours hastens the cycle, also by hours. If this weren’t the case, it would be useless as I currently use it. The ten to twenty minutes is as a sedative, when taken twenty minutes before bedtime.
There are, of course, a number of pathways affecting sleep timing, including the uninformatively named System X that just tries to keep track of time by dead reckoning. I believe, perhaps wrongly, that the SCN’s sleep related functions are mostly directly by melatonin; melatonin reduces the firing rates of the parts of the SCN that increase in firing rate in the presence of light (according to Wikipedia). This is the core timing mechanism of how light affects the SCN, isn’t it?
Edit: Looking at it again, the relevant part of the SCN article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus )(in the electrophysiology section) does not have direct citations, but I’ll assume it’s correct unless this activity of melatonin is directly disputed.
Edited again: An edit changed the structure of what I was saying, making for a strange sentence I don’t endorse.
I should note that my sleep issues are completely under control now, primarily due to the light therapy, as well as making sure I wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends. I now sleep like a normal, healthy person.
For a long time, especially when I was living in a dim basement, I had bouts of non-24 hour sleep-wake rhythm and I even had periods of irregular sleep-wake rhythm, which was a nightmare. So the light therapy etc. has taken me a long way. Fixing my sleep also played a large role in fixing my depression (and vice versa), since the comorbidity between depression and circadian rhythm disorders is very high (I think I remember >50%)
As for melatonin, I was never able to tell for sure if it was having an effect, but it definitely wasn’t solving my sleep issues as the other stuff did. Maybe there’s some biological variability in response to it or something. I did try different doses, up to the sedative level, and it never really helped. I’m glad some people find it helpful though.
There’s no sedative level and most melatonin products have doses that are too high to be clinically effective. What was the lowest dose you took?
There is, in fact, a sedative level, and higher doses aren’t less effective, they just induce more side effects, from what I understand. I tried every dose under the sun, including tiny ones. The effect was always weak at best.
Scott does write “A meta-analysis of dose-response relationships concurred, finding a plateau effect around 0.3 mg, with doses after that having no more efficacy, but worse side effects” but that doesn’t mean that higher doses keep their efficiency.
His article for example goes on to say “And Pires et al studying 22-24 year olds found that 0.3 mg worked better than 1.0.” Which is likely
Where did you get the idea that there’s a sedative level for melatonin?
Honestly, it’s a little strange that light therapy would help and melatonin not (since light therapy shifts circadian rhythms via [probably] lowering your melatonin levels in the morning). It’s good you have your sleep issues under control.
The effect size of melatonin use is usually pretty small. I think most studies say it shifts your cycle by 10-20 minutes. As I tended to go to bed an hour or two later every night, this was not enough.
As for light therapy, it’s not strange that it would have a different effect. Light stimulates a neural pathway going straight to your suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which is the core circadian clock in your brain. (Melatonin is not involved in this, though melatonin is affected downstream.) Melatonin, on the other hand, is released by the pineal gland and is used to regulate the SCN (among other things), but it’s not involved directly in the core timing mechanisms of the SCN.
Melatonin actually causes a shift much larger than ten to twenty minutes -when taken early. Melatonin taken in the morning causes a large shift to delay the cycle (this can cause a shift of several hours). Melatonin taken after several hours hastens the cycle, also by hours. If this weren’t the case, it would be useless as I currently use it. The ten to twenty minutes is as a sedative, when taken twenty minutes before bedtime.
There are, of course, a number of pathways affecting sleep timing, including the uninformatively named System X that just tries to keep track of time by dead reckoning. I believe, perhaps wrongly, that the SCN’s sleep related functions are mostly directly by melatonin; melatonin reduces the firing rates of the parts of the SCN that increase in firing rate in the presence of light (according to Wikipedia). This is the core timing mechanism of how light affects the SCN, isn’t it?
Edit: Looking at it again, the relevant part of the SCN article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus )(in the electrophysiology section) does not have direct citations, but I’ll assume it’s correct unless this activity of melatonin is directly disputed.
Edited again: An edit changed the structure of what I was saying, making for a strange sentence I don’t endorse.