I’m interested in knowing how you came up with the conclusion that it reduces your sleep need (or bed time) by one hour?
I can understand that taking melatonin would reduce bed time if it made you fall asleep faster, but personally I’ve had no trouble falling asleep quickly so there would basically be no difference. (In fact, I’ve experienced an opposite effect with the couple of times I’ve taken melatonin.)
It takes a lot more than just casual observations to conclude that there are other effects. Basically you’d need to measure your sleep debt some way and compare its development when taking the drug and when not. Unfortunately there is no direct way to measure sleep debt so it will require quite extensive tests to make any decisive conclusions about this hypothesis.
If you already have this data, please share it. If not, I’d be happy if you took a step back and really tried to measure and confirm this claim.
One final note is that current research has demonstrated that sleep has an important part in memory consolidation. If supplemental melatonin really does cut sleep need, it will necessary have effects on memory consolidation too. (For example, motor memory consolidation happens in REM and NREM-2 phases that most probably would be cut if daily sleep need was reduced.)
I’ve had no trouble falling asleep quickly so there would basically be no difference. (In fact, I’ve experienced an opposite effect with the couple of times I’ve taken melatonin.)
For people who actually have trouble falling asleep, or wanting to fall asleep, this is definitely a concern. When I was researching melatonin a few years ago, one of the problems I read was that if you fight off the effects of getting sleepy long enough, you’ll actually find it more difficult to sleep afterwards (that night, I mean). This was the reason I chose to avoid it after a few tests at that time: I didn’t feel I could afford the risk of accidentally pushing through the sleepiness and getting almost no sleep in a given night.
I’m interested in knowing how you came up with the conclusion that it reduces your sleep need (or bed time) by one hour?
I can understand that taking melatonin would reduce bed time if it made you fall asleep faster, but personally I’ve had no trouble falling asleep quickly so there would basically be no difference. (In fact, I’ve experienced an opposite effect with the couple of times I’ve taken melatonin.)
It takes a lot more than just casual observations to conclude that there are other effects. Basically you’d need to measure your sleep debt some way and compare its development when taking the drug and when not. Unfortunately there is no direct way to measure sleep debt so it will require quite extensive tests to make any decisive conclusions about this hypothesis.
If you already have this data, please share it. If not, I’d be happy if you took a step back and really tried to measure and confirm this claim.
One final note is that current research has demonstrated that sleep has an important part in memory consolidation. If supplemental melatonin really does cut sleep need, it will necessary have effects on memory consolidation too. (For example, motor memory consolidation happens in REM and NREM-2 phases that most probably would be cut if daily sleep need was reduced.)
For people who actually have trouble falling asleep, or wanting to fall asleep, this is definitely a concern. When I was researching melatonin a few years ago, one of the problems I read was that if you fight off the effects of getting sleepy long enough, you’ll actually find it more difficult to sleep afterwards (that night, I mean). This was the reason I chose to avoid it after a few tests at that time: I didn’t feel I could afford the risk of accidentally pushing through the sleepiness and getting almost no sleep in a given night.
See http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lt/case_study_melatonin/5w76