[joveian]

I get the wake up reaction with any dose, unless I take it with other stuff that keeps me asleep. I have Non-24 and have tried a bunch of stuff and have found finding things to help stay asleep easier than finding stuff to help get to sleep, although nothing really works for very long at a time (and there is a huge amount of individual variation in what helps at all). If exercise works for you that would be best but for me it doesn't help.

I wrote a long post about stuff that helps me stay asleep a month ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384486

[say_hello]

I also have N24 (I am sighted). 0.3mg 2 hours before the bedtime I wanted worked but would cause me to wake up in the middle of the night and sleep very long (about 13 hours). I'm testing 0.3mg 4 hours before bedtime and that's working so far.

The normal instructions for using melatonin as a sleep aid are to take it a short time before going to bed. It appears that at least some N24 sufferers have a different reaction to it and need to be dosed several hours earlier, contrary to the normal instructions.

[joveian]

I'm fairly sure I tried somewhere around .3mg 4 hours before bed and it still woke me up (and I couldn't get back to sleep for hours). I just recently tried .3ish mg (scooped from powder this time so not very precise, next time I'll try the water mixing trick that someone here suggested) 7 hours before bed for five days and it still seemed to wake me up more than usual (but I also took other stuff with it and was able to get back to sleep quickly most of the time), although hard to tell for sure if it was the melatonin since it was only a few days. Which is a little strange since the half life is short enough that it should all be long gone by the time I actually get to bed. The melatonin did seem to help in some ways though, so I will try it again soon.

If you haven't seen it, there is a circadian rhythm disorders patient advocacy group, email discussion list (not just for memebers), and survey (also not just for members) at: https://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/

There are quite a few people with Non-24 on the list.

[say_hello]

Also, I do have concerns about the quality control and dosage accuracy of these supplements. There was a study that tested OTC melatonin products in Canada and found:

> Results show that melatonin content did not meet within a 10-percent margin of the label claim in more than 71 percent of supplements, with the actual content ranging from 83 percent less to 478 percent more than the concentration declared on the label. The study also found that lot-to-lot variability within a particular product varied by as much as 465 percent.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170214162728.h...

There is no reason to believe the situation is different in the US where supplements are not regulated like drugs (thanks, Orrin Hatch).

[joveian]

Good point, that would certainly confuse the situation if there was a 5x variation. Even though they aren't treated the same as drugs there are still quailty standards in the US, although they don't seem to be enforced very well. I try to find suppliers that do better testing. If you have the money for FDA approved stuff you can get ramelteon or tasimelteon these days. But they are quite expensive. Although it looks like the ramelteon patent expires next year and there are a couple of approved generics already so prices should go down quickly next year:

https://www.drugs.com/availability/generic-rozerem.html

I got 1g pure melatonin powder from a now gone supplier that did good quailty testing. It takes me several tries to get something that looks like about .3mg since it is such a tiny amount and I'm sure there is quite a bit of variation, but I'm fairly sure I at least get < .5mg each time.