[mallomarmeasle]

I wonder about the dosage you might’ve been taking. Many, many people take much more than needed, and higher doses are more likely to have adverse effects. 250-300 µg is an appropriate dosage for most adults. Note that common over-the-counter dosages are 10 to 25 mg. There is a Cochran collaboration meta-analysis supporting this.

I work in a pharmacy school in the US. One of my colleagues told me a funny anecdote about traveling in Great Britain. He had forgotten his melatonin, so went to a pharmacy to get some. The pharmacist told him that it was only available with a prescription, being a neurohormone. But here’s some promethazine OTC. That’s Rx only in the US.

[vidarh]

10-25mg seems really high. UK NHS advice is 2mg for sleep, 3mg for jet lag, w/advice it can be increased to up to 10mg if you don't get the desired.effect at lower doses.

For my part, 3mg leaves me totally ruined (exhausted, lethargic, worse than being ill) the following day. 1mg seems to improve my sleep, but I can totally believe less would work too. I will certainly not go higher.

UK is weird with this - I can order all kinds of stuff from abroad that I can't buy OTC here, but there's also another recent "workaround": online pharmacies here can sell you a variety of prescription drugs provided they ask you the appropriate questions and have a prescription issued as part of the sales process. Got my last melatonin that way.

[inglor_cz]

I can tolerate 3 mg very well, 5 mg seems to be the bridge too far, where I wake up exhausted and lethargic.

I experimented with higher doses, such as 15 mg. They worked like sledgehammer to the forehead, with a weird feeling the next day. Not recommended. A good sleep mask and ear plugs are better than increasing dosage of melatonin, at least for me.

Here in CZ, melatonin is OTC.

[sundvor]

In addition to the same 3mg, I ask my Google Home (the first "mini tower", not the puck) to "play the sounds of the ocean" + run an older, slightly noisy purifier (mainly for the white noise, have other much better filtering purifiers in the house that are just too quiet!). Putting my phone away, after a few pages of a novel in my Kindle 11 SE (warmest setting ) I'm dead asleep.

My level of tiredness in the morning seems mainly linked to hours of sleep + how heavy I lifted the day/s before.

(I should trial 1mg as well.)

[vvpan]

I think that's super reasonable and I have no record or memory of dosage, sadly. Although nowadays I approach such things from a very different angle: why do I think I need to medicate at all? Why am I, a relatively young and healthy person, not sleeping well? Jet lag in my book is not a strong enough reason to self-medicate, just suck it up and learn to enjoy early mornings =)

I have been reading a book about biological effects of daylight and how little sun a modern person is exposed to on a daily basis. There has been more research on the topic, especially since a recent research on receptors in the eye responsible for detecting gradual changes in daylight (ipRGCs). Spending more time in the daylight might be a better way to self-medicate.

[zemvpferreira]

My own two cents on melatonin at low (.5mg) dosages: it helps me go to bed and keep a reasonable circadian rythm 100x better than any sleep hygiene trick. Without it I have racing thoughts for hours and no sleep pressure on a 24 hour cycle. It's a great boon for me, a healthy normal person.

[OGWhales]

It can be frustrating finding it in reasonable doses. I remember reading somewhere that the original formula was quite a small dose and other manufacturers simply increased the dose to get around the patent. Naturally, people showed a preference for the higher doses because they assumed it must be better, despite a lack of evidence. As a result, manufacturers making pills with a more reasonable dose were less likely to sell their product and a general trend of increasing doses was observed. This is why it’s easy to find 10-25mg dosed pills in stores, but difficult to find anything sub 3mg, let alone sub 1mg.

[r00fus]

At lower dosages it acts to nudge your body to feel drowsy.

At higher doses it has a soporific effect similar to other more powerful sleep medications.

I and my family use it to help with long jetlag but just for the first few days.