First Experiment with Melatonin - The Good and the Bad [n=1]

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I have no trouble with my sleep. I would say that on scale of 1 to 10, my sleep is at 8, at least 4 days a week. So, I'd say that's decent. Sleep is very high, maybe at the very top, on my priority list because I regard it as extremely important for mental health and for my strength training. Anyhow, I'm satisfied with my current sleep hygiene and I may write a future post about what I've been doing to improve it; it was deficient in the past.

I bought a small bottle of 10 melatonin pills a couple of days ago because my 'experimenter' nature made me curious. Melatonin is a hormone that's secreted in the evening to promote sleep. Many people use it as a cheap and convenient way to aid their sleep. It's often the first intervention that some people with deficient sleep use before getting to more powerful approaches, like drugs.

So, here's my experiment in a short and digestible format:

• night before: slept well for about 9 hours
• this was a rest day (no lifting)
• took the pill (3mg of melatonin) at about 10 P.M. and then went to bed
• read something on my tablet (with the brightness at minimum) until almost 11 P.M.
• called it a day, and fell asleep immediately.

There was no difference in the onset of my sleep. But here comes the interesting part. At about 12:36 A.M. went into sleep paralysis. So, I woke up and couldn't move. Basically, you become conscious faster than your body can 'recover' its senses. I wrote a more 'technical' post about sleep paralysis here on steemit about a year ago.

Were this experience remote to me, I would have panicked. But I remember I had episodes of sleep paralysis way back, years ago when I was sleep deficient. So, I noticed what was happening and I had 2 immediate choices: wake-up or get back to sleep.

In my sleep paralysis experiences, when I wake up and cannot move, it's like the brain knows that something's wrong and tries to correct it 'onsite'. So, I feel this strong urge to get back to sleep (unconscious) mode. I can fight back this urge and try to move; and when I do this, I usually 'win'. Or, I can just go with the flow and allow myself to go back to sleep.

So, I fought back and 'recovered' my senses after a few attempts. Went to pee and then back to sleep. I woke up two more times during the night and fell back asleep immediately.

When I woke up the second time, I decided to open the window to see if the noise from outside would perturb my sleep. I also removed my sleep mask to allow street lights to enter the room. It had no effect. I fell asleep like a rock; I closed the window and put the mask back on when I woke up the third time.

Overall, it was a solid night of sleep. And I woke up very rested (from REM), from a dream. I was ~10 hours in bed, and roughly 9 hours sleeping.

The next day went okay; didn't feel anything unusual with my overall perception. However, the workout at 10 A.M. was one of the best in months (the previous day of recovery could be a confounder).

Now, here's the catch. I later learned that 3mg is a very solid dose of melatonin. Average formulations have it at 0.3 to 1mg per pill. So, I could have yoked my MT1 and MT2 melatonin receptors with this overdose. And this might have possibly perturbed the normal sleep cycle and could have created a desync or a phase shift, hence the sleep paralysis. There could have been other confounders as well. Plus, it was the first time...

Anyhow, I ditched the bottle (too high concentration) and if I decide to undergo further experiments, I'll try testing with 0.3 or 0.5 mg, and go from there. Has any of you done similar experiments?

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Image Credits: [derwerbepool via Pixabay]

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Cristi Vlad, Self-Experimenter and Author