[HN Gopher] Melatonin as a treatment for food waste
___________________________________________________________________
Melatonin as a treatment for food waste
Author : WallyFunk
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-08-04 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
| denverllc wrote:
| Speaking of fruit preservation: has anyone bought
| prepacked/sliced fruit from the grocery store / Costco that has
| an "off" flavor to it? Almost like they added some preservative.
| (The different fruit had the same flavor, which makes me think
| something was added). I have, and nothing was on the ingredients,
| so I am wondering what could have been added.
| delgaudm wrote:
| Could it be lemon juice? That's a common think to add to
| preserve color and prevent oxidation in a home recipe.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Most people know melatonin as extracellular melatonin, released
| by the pineal gland, which acts as a hormone to promote sleep.
|
| Melatonin is also a powerful intracellular antioxidant that
| protects cells against oxidative stressors made in mitochondria
| as byproducts of ATP production. Aside from the pineal gland
| melatonin, melatonin is produced directly in mitochondria by
| cytochrome c oxidase upon exposure to near infrared.
|
| https://youtu.be/2Zzo4SJopcY?t=404
|
| That seems more relevant to this discussion.
| vvpan wrote:
| Melatonin is very interesting because it is believed that all
| living things (bacteria, fungi, etc) have it [1]. Calling it a
| "sleep aid" is somewhat off because in humans and other animals
| it is compound heavily involved in modulating circadian rhythms.
| It is not a "drug".
|
| And a little personal anecdote about it: I have gone through a
| period of bad sleep and depression and was taking melotonin to
| help with sleep. On some mornings I would wake up completely
| emotionally destroyed, barely able to function. After observing
| the patterns for a few months I notice that this happened only on
| days after melotonin intake. Looking around the internet I've
| found stories of people describing exactly the same symptoms as
| I've had mornings after melotonin ingestion. Long story short I
| am likely not taking melotonin ever again and regret ever doing
| so. Sometimes I even wonder whether it generally exacerbated or
| even caused my condition at the time. I think research on this is
| scant atm.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6481276/
| patrulek wrote:
| I had much better results with tryptophan than melatonin in
| sleep quality.
|
| Taking melatonin for me resulted in top many random grogginess
| or waking early in the middle of nights.
| kouru225 wrote:
| How were you taking it? My psychiatrist recommended that I take
| it 12 hours before I want to wake up and really only recommends
| 1 mg or so.
| vvpan wrote:
| Honestly, I do not remember. A few years have elapsed. I did
| not do so in any thoughtful way - there was a supplement in
| pill form and I took it in the evening. Pretty much the only
| time in my life I self-medicated with something. I would say
| just observe how it makes you feel, keep a diary? At least
| out of curiosity rather than caution. If you find it makes
| you feel better then that's great. (Of course subjectivity is
| a problem in this case).
| savanaly wrote:
| Just taking melatonin vs not taking it isn't the only decision
| space. There's a lot that goes into taking it to make it work.
| I've never done so but I understand this to be the case from
| reading this [0].
|
| [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-
| th...
| vvpan wrote:
| I believe it. I guess my takeaways are:
|
| * Be cautious, effects of taking a hormone are complex and it
| can be more potent than might be evident at first.
|
| * If you have sleep issues they might have a root cause. In
| my case I think it was circumstantial anxiety.
|
| * Jetlag is not that big of a deal.
| cjrp wrote:
| The dosage of melatonin you can buy over-the-counter in the US
| always surprises me. In the UK I believe it's only 2mg with a
| prescription, but I was seeing 5mg+ just in a grocery store.
| loeg wrote:
| Part of the problem historically (into the 2010s) was that
| MIT had a patent on doses of melatonin under 1mg[1]. So
| manufacturers could only avoid the patent by selling larger
| doses. That patent is expired but to some extent customers
| probably still think more is better.
|
| Personally, I use a fairly large dose of melatonin daily
| without ill effect; and it works better for me than smaller
| doses.
|
| [1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5641801A/en
| Zak wrote:
| I've seen few better examples of what's wrong with the
| patent system than this.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| Behold the new target market: children at 1mg [1]. The US
| markets melatonin as a vitamin.
|
| I really have no clue on the long term adverse effects, but
| having used 5mg as a sleeping aid for a bit, one thing is for
| sure: melatonin is really not for OTC child use.
|
| I'm shocked that this is legal!
|
| [1] https://www.target.com/s/kids+melatonin+gummies
| vl wrote:
| Yes, let's make everything illegal, so you have to pay
| somebody to give a prescription to you any time you need
| anything. Somebody else always knows better what is good
| for you! Especially it will help poor people, which already
| shop at veterinary stores instead of pharmacies.
| cjrp wrote:
| My friend, a children's psychiatric nurse, said they offer
| something like 0.2mg doses for kids in their care. 1mg is
| huge!
| vidarh wrote:
| Up to 2mg for sleep, 3mg for jet lag in the UK. 3mg affects
| me badly - I take at most 1mg.
| ac29 wrote:
| Melatonin in the US is frequently found in 5 or 10 mg doses,
| which is a huge amount and can cause adverse reactions in
| people. A better dose is 0.3mg (300 mcg) or 0.5mg (500 mcg).
| vvpan wrote:
| General problem with "supplements" I imagine.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Also, a supplement being labled "500 micrograms" has no
| requirement to be correct. The FDA has handwaved away the
| entire industry, and broadly there is zero quality control
| for actual active ingredients. Many supplements will claim
| that they've been tested, but there's no legal requirement
| to do so, the labs are usually owned by supplement makers,
| and there's no penalty for lying about any testing as
| fraudulent marketing claims largely go unpunished because
| the US judicial branch chooses to interpret the law
| stupidly conservatively
| vidarh wrote:
| It seems to be particularly bad with Melatonin, because a
| lot of people do really badly with big doses. A 3mg dose
| makes me more exhausted than I've _ever_ felt before
| melatonin. I tried A couple of times. Never again. I wrote
| it off until someone pointed out this isn 't unusual with
| doses that high. 1mg dose is fine. I can't image how I'd
| have felt with a higher dose.
| qwerpy wrote:
| That explains a lot. I have a bottle of 5mg pills and I found
| out I could still feel the effects when I would take a tiny
| "nibble" of the pill. So over the course of a bad sleep week
| I would slowly consume a single pill. This bottle is a
| lifetime supply, assuming it doesn't degrade.
| [deleted]
| circuit10 wrote:
| Isn't a drug just anything that affects how your body
| functions? It doesn't have to be something that your body
| wouldn't have in it anyway
| scotty79 wrote:
| Sugar affects how your body functions too.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| So homeopathy pills are drugs!
| vvpan wrote:
| You are probably correct, I honestly do not know. What I
| meant is that there is an association between melatonin and
| sleep and there is _some_ research on it as an effective
| medicine but the quantity of it (to my untrained eye) is
| limited. So when people take it they generally take it as an
| over-the-counter supplement with some hope for uncertain
| effects because "it's the thing in the body that regulates
| sleep". Thus the quotes around "drug".
| speak_plainly wrote:
| I'm no doctor but I think the difference between a drug and a
| hormone is that a drug is a foreign substance you take to
| affect the way your body functions while a hormone is
| something produced endogenously to regulate various processes
| in the body.
|
| People need to understand that melatonin is a hormone and
| that comes with different risks and issues than a drug.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There is no concrete definition of "Drug". Most working
| definitions are "Something that affects you, but isn't
| food".
| brianpan wrote:
| Nor is there a concrete definition of hormone.
|
| Drug: Chemical that affect you (by ingesting), but isn't
| food.
|
| Hormone: Chemical that affects you.
| swores wrote:
| Nah, there are drugs that already exist in the body (such
| as the extremely strong psychedelic DMT, which naturally
| occurs in tiny amounts within human brains and within many
| other animals and plants).
|
| There isn't a hard scientific boundary of what substances
| count as a "drug", and if a hormone is being taken as a
| pill to affect a human then it is being used as a drug.
| delecti wrote:
| Drugs and hormones aren't separate groups either. Melatonin
| is a hormone which is also sold as a drug. Additionally,
| some hormones are wholly artificial; many of the estrogens
| and progestins which are used for birth control fit that
| description.
| mallomarmeasle wrote:
| 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 ug 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.
| OGWhales wrote:
| 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.
| vidarh wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| vvpan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| r00fus wrote:
| 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.
| tracker1 wrote:
| This just sounds like a bad idea. Not least of which, is that we
| have enough food to feed the world, and food waste has a
| usefulness and that is in creating new live soil.
| raun1 wrote:
| Melatonin disrupts circadian hormonal cycles. One of the key ways
| being delay of morning secretion of cortisol and other hormones.
|
| It really should not be ingested except on rare occasions.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Not loading for me.
|
| web archive link here:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230804183727/https://www.anthr...
| [deleted]
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Terrible title.
|
| _...melatonin could also be a vital tool to help fresh produce
| survive its own journey from farm to fork, reducing the
| monumental amount of food loss that occurs each year._
|
| I interpreted the title to mean it would be applied to food after
| it was deemed "waste" as a form of "waste treatment" of some
| kind.
|
| I am not thrilled by the proposal. Melatonin impacts the immune
| system in ways not yet understood. This could be kind of like
| adding more antibiotics to the food chain.
| Havoc wrote:
| Take care with the stuff. Thought it's safer than other sleeping
| tablets (and it is), but when they say don't use long term it's
| for a reason.
|
| Ended up with strange continuous low key chest pains. Was fine,
| just had to stop
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| If you have IBD / Chrohn's be careful with melatonin
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/melatonin-used-to-...
| kromem wrote:
| As mentioned in the article, there's also studies where it may
| improve things. This particular one is a mouse model with
| induced DSS colitis, which I kind of wish would be erased from
| methodology forever across literature.
|
| Not only is it mice rather than humans, but it is focused on
| replicating the end symptoms without mirroring the underlying
| causes.
|
| For example, what if IBD/Crohn's had to do with decreased gut
| melatonin production, leading to bacterial changes in the gut
| leading to autoimmune attacks leading to gut
| inflammation/ulcerations? Without replicating the casual
| factors, simply inducing ulcerations using a chemical agent
| without also replicating the autoimmune attack isn't very
| helpful.
|
| And anecdotally, my own disease is in complete remission with a
| surprisingly light medical treatment particularly after
| comparing dietary interventions inducing remission in two meta-
| analyses and finding the one key shared factor was reduction in
| processed sugars and introducing the same in my own diet.
|
| But that's with me taking 20mg of melatonin for a sleep
| disorder. And when my sleep is disturbed too much (as occurs if
| I don't have the melatonin to use), the resulting physical
| stress can sometimes induce small flares.
|
| In my own experience and in having looked at studies looking at
| melatonin use in human IBD patients, I'm fairly skeptical of
| the findings in the DSS mouse study are enough that anyone with
| sleep issues helped by melatonin should avoid it.
|
| Especially given there's a 2-fold increase in risk of disease
| activity in _humans_ with poor sleep:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3659204/
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| One of the publications they cite says melatonin is good for
| IBD:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03009...
|
| Too lazy to see if that's backed by a study on actual human
| health outcomes instead of rat models like the thrust of your
| article.
| lcnmrn wrote:
| ...and IgY for animal products.
| pfisherman wrote:
| I don't think sprinkling all the produce with a pharmacologically
| active molecule is a good idea. Side effects can and will be a
| big problem.
| maltyr wrote:
| I'm not sure we should cover our food in melatonin. People would
| recoil at the thought of pretty much any other hormone being
| added to our food supply.
|
| It's strange to me how Melatonin is so uncontrolled in usage,
| dosage, etc., despite being a hormone.
|
| The article suggests it's safer than current food additives, but
| I find that statement questionable. We don't understand the full
| effect of Melatonin on the human body, so I don't know how you
| can make that conclusion.
| teamonkey wrote:
| It may be uncontrolled in the US but not everywhere. It's not
| allowed to be sold without a prescription where I live, and
| even then it's only prescribed for chronic sleep disorders. I
| always ask anyone travelling to the US to bring back a bottle.
| RyJones wrote:
| I asked a pharmacy in Reykjavik if they sold it, or Tylenol
| PM, and the pharmacist reacted like I'd asked to buy a brick
| of cocaine.
| orev wrote:
| Never take Tylenol PM to sleep, unless you also have a
| reason to need a painkiller (acetaminophen). Acetaminophen
| is toxic to the liver and can cause liver failure if
| overdosed. A regular diphenhydramine (Benadryl) is the just
| the PM part without the extra risk (except that has its own
| risks).
| jansan wrote:
| It has a therapeutic index of 10, which is quite low
| (easy to overdose). I stopped taking Paracetamol almost
| completely after learning what it can to your body.
|
| Also, there was a story about the developer of DirectX
| who alledgedly overdoesed on Paracetamol/Tylenol:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201223122742/https://www.ws
| j.c...
| zigboppityslick wrote:
| [dead]
| 14 wrote:
| Here in Canada it is not controlled either and one can freely
| buy it at places like Walmart or anywhere with a pharmacy
| section.
| danielbln wrote:
| In Germany freely available OTC.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| NL as well, a whole section of drug stores (that also sell
| things like shampoos, hair dyes, makeup, toys, ramen
| noodles, candy... they diversified) dedicated to melatonin,
| CBD oils and products, probably some others too.
|
| I want to believe it's because they've been thoroughly
| tested to not be harmful, since they don't even have the
| leaflet that's mandatory with drugs / medication listing
| all the side effects and whatnot.
| jmspring wrote:
| Is the OTC dosage limited? I recall in a prior life, my
| partner would bring melatonin back from the states to
| Germany for her brother.
| swozey wrote:
| > chronic sleep disorders
|
| Wow. It's been a long time but I've definitely taken
| melatonin and if I felt any effects at all they definitely
| weren't strong if even noticable.
|
| Here (USA) Ambien is prescribed often for chronic sleep
| issues and that drug absolutely terrifies me. I've had
| friends addicted to it who wound up in a lot of criminal
| trouble for trespassing and wandering around beaches naked
| and things like that because they'd sleep-walk hallucinate. I
| had one friend get arrested for sleeping in someones (random)
| attic on an ambien kick. A pilot, no less.
|
| My mom gave me a bottle of it when I was in high school and
| it made me hallucinate in an unpleasant way. I do plenty of
| mycology stuff but the ambien was weird. I think I took it
| twice or three times and just stopped.
| skybrian wrote:
| As with a lot of medicine the dosage matters a lot. I will
| take .5 mg of melatonin when going to bed earlier than
| usual and the effect is fairly subtle. But it's commonly
| sold in 10mg doses which seems very high.
| covercash wrote:
| I have to go out of my way to find doses under 1mg,
| almost everything they sell in US retail stores is 5mg or
| 10mg. Inevitably I end up with something marketed for
| babies.
| jrockway wrote:
| My understanding is that melatonin has an inverse
| correlation between dosage and effect. 10mg won't make
| you as sleepy as 1mg.
|
| I take 1mg of melatonin every night, and it does
| immediately make me sleepy. I used to buy 10mg at the
| drugstore and it just makes me feel like shit for the
| next day.
| metadat wrote:
| I hadn't heard of this before!
|
| After some digging here are some interesting discoveries
| related to melatonin and doxylamine:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/insomnia/comments/spoaec/anyone_
| hav...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/insomnia/comments/spoaec/anyone_
| hav...
| orev wrote:
| The optimal dose is 0.3mg, so I would cut the 1mg tablet
| in half to get close. You're still doing better than most
| people who are essentially taking a horse-sized dose at
| 10mg.
|
| The 10mg makes you feel bad because it's still in your
| system the next day. At the recommended (lower) doses,
| your body fully clears it out by morning, so you feel
| alert and also have much lower risk of long term effects.
| skybrian wrote:
| Huh, I had somehow remembered it as 0.9. I expect it
| varies per person, though.
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-
| more-th...
| worldsayshi wrote:
| >inverse correlation between dosage and effect
|
| That sounds quite magical. Wouldn't it be more likely
| that the uptake characteristics were very different for
| the two variants? Not sure if possible but maybe the 10mg
| variant were still being digested the day after so it
| would make you sleepy then instead of during the night?
| kevinh456 wrote:
| Ambien makes me wake up screaming at the top of my lungs.
| Every time. I never remember but it scares the shit out of
| my wife. No Ambien for me. Lol
| swozey wrote:
| Are you waking up from a nightmare? Do you have any
| recollection?
| vl wrote:
| Melatonin, as any hormone/supplement, helps if you have
| deficiency, and hurts if you have normal or high level
| already. If your natural melatonin production is good
| enough, you are not going to feel effects, or even will get
| negative effects (I.e. people reporting hallucinations)
| kelnos wrote:
| Interesting; I didn't realize Ambien was addictive. It was
| prescribed to me years ago after laser eye surgery (but
| only a week or so of pills). It was great for the first two
| or three days (I generally do have trouble sleeping and
| staying asleep, and Ambien knocked me right out and kept me
| that way for a solid 8 hours), but then I guess I developed
| a tolerance and it stopped being effective.
|
| I wonder if that's why people get addicted? Maybe the
| normal dose is fine, but many some start developing a
| tolerance, and then self-raise their dosage in order to get
| it to work again, but a higher dose triggers addiction?
| swozey wrote:
| I'm not sure about its actual addictive power but I do
| know that a sad amount of people like to get ambien
| drunk.
|
| > According to a report by the Drug Abuse Warning Network
| (DAWN), in 2010, about 57% of ER visits and
| hospitalizations caused by taking too much Ambien also
| involved other drugs. Ambien combined with alcohol
| accounted for 14% of those visits, or 2,851 people total.
| Combining alcohol and Ambien increased the person's
| likelihood of requiring transfer to an intensive care
| unit (ICU) due to overdose.6
|
| That could be because insomnia and alcohol dependence
| often go hand in hand. Additionally, alcohol works on the
| same GABA receptors in the brain as Ambien, increasing
| the effects of both Ambien and alcohol. Reported rates of
| sleep problems among people with alcohol use disorders
| (AUDs) in
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2018/05/30/615421269...
|
| https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-
| treatment/mi...
| temp0826 wrote:
| Fun fact, both ambien (zolpidem) and muscimol (in amanita
| muscaria mushrooms) act as a GABA-A agonists.
| jurynulifcation wrote:
| Ethanol is also a GABA-A agonist if I recall correctly
| amelius wrote:
| And what to think of this book, where the author literally
| persuades people to megadose on the hormone:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Melatonin-Transform-Melatonin-
| resilie...
|
| It's mindboggling that this is freely available.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Yes, the absolute mind boggling horror of free people
| being able to decide for themselves what to ingest.
| sobkas wrote:
| > Yes, the absolute mind boggling horror of free people
| being able to decide for themselves what to ingest.
|
| Absolute horror that people ingest things based on a lie.
| It's on level of this powder doesn't contain asbestos.
| Just because he isn't a big corp doesn't mean he is free
| to lie and profit on his lies.
| kelnos wrote:
| The problem is that capitalism drives people to push lies
| as fact, and manipulate people into believing those lies.
| "Well maybe people just shouldn't be so gullible" clearly
| isn't a solution, or the problem would be solved already.
|
| I don't think that's an excuse to start banning books
| (and other media), but products like this -- especially
| anything that advocates a particular approach to health,
| nutrition, or medicine -- should be vetted by actual
| experts (more than one), and stores should be required to
| post disclaimers when the product doesn't pass muster.
|
| Yes, there's the potential for abuse and shady dealings
| there, but I'd like to believe that the end result would
| still be better than what we have now.
|
| Now, some people are just raised to believe in complete
| nonsense, so you're not going to save everyone by trying
| to educate them. But I think it'd help many people not
| get drawn in by (potentially dangerous) pseudoscience.
| maksimur wrote:
| That book screams things such as conspiracy,
| pseudoscience, crazy guy, cult leader and anything in
| between, to me.
| swozey wrote:
| > Dr John Lieurance is a Chiropractic Neurologist and
| Naturopathic Physician
|
| I had never heard of a Chiropractic Neurologist.
| Interesting.
|
| Welp reading about him was a wild ride. To save people a
| click -
|
| > After becoming severely ill with Lyme, EBV and Mold
| illness, Dr John Lieurance began to explore ways to
| improve health at the deepest cellular level. His journey
| brought him to discover Melatonin as the core anti-
| oxidant that supports all systems in the body. His book
| on Melatonin takes a deep dive into healing naturally and
| using high dose melatonin, along with various other
| practical healing methods to heal the body and live a
| longer and more vital life.
|
| His life focus is on vitality, longevity and enhanced
| consciousness. His interest is in connecting what he
| calls, "The 3 legs of a stool": Vitality of the body,
| Mind Mastery & a Direct experience of God. Using science
| and ancient wisdom, he aims to connect these dots in his
| own journey to becoming the best version of himself in
| this life. Diving deeply into many healing methods, to
| discover the deepest and most profound means to activate
| cellular energy, such as with Melatonin, Methylene Blue,
| NAD+, as well as fasting with various nutrients to
| activate responses. Dr. John explores many new paths in
| the health care world, with his unique & fresh ideas
| using various delivery systems, such as suppositories and
| nasal sprays and various protocols he has created. He
| attended Parker College of Chiropractic & received his
| Naturopathic degree in 2001 from St. Luke's School of
| Medicine. He has practiced Functional Neurology,
| Naturopathic medicine and Regenerative Medicine, using
| stem cell therapy in Sarasota for 25 years. Founder of
| the Advanced Rejuvenation Center in Sarasota, Florida,
| and founder of Functional Cranial Release - which is an
| Endo-Nasal Cranial Treatment with the ability to unlock
| the spinal fluid to allow profound healing of the nervous
| system. See his next book "It's All in Your Head: Endo-
| Nasal Cranial Therapy". He has been involved in multiple
| clinical trials, including investigation into the use of
| stem cells for Parkinson's Disease, COPD, OA of the knee
| and hip from 2012-2014. He has a clinical focus on mold
| illness, Lyme disease and chronic viral infections.
| mbernstein wrote:
| You haven't heard of it because it's unfortunately pseudo
| science.
| rat9988 wrote:
| There are many many studies on melatonin, it's not like we know
| nothing.
| maltyr wrote:
| And those studies suggest that melatonin plays a critical
| part in your circadian rhythm, which kind of implies that
| adding it to your food would also screw with your circadian
| rhythm. That alone seems like a good enough reason to caution
| against adding it into the food supply.
|
| Additionally, there are receptors for melatonin in a number
| of systems in the body, and we don't have much knowledge on
| what those receptors do.
| kelnos wrote:
| Then again, my circadian rhythm has been pretty broken
| since I was a child. Not only does my body drift toward a
| 28-hour day (20 awake, 8 asleep) if I'm not careful, but I
| tend not to get tired enough to sleep until 3am or 4am.
|
| Melatonin supplements _fix_ my circadian rhythm. I don 't
| take it every night, but when I do, I get tired and fall
| asleep within 3-5 hours, sleep for a solid 8 or 9, and then
| feel pretty good for the next day. And if I take it again
| that night at the appropriate time, I can keep myself much
| closer to a 24-hour wake/sleep cycle.
| Void_ wrote:
| Once I took melatonin to get a better afternoon nap.
|
| I never felt so groggy in my life. Completely screwed up my
| internal clock.
|
| I'm very careful with it since then.
|
| Taking it at night time doesn't quite show how powerful it
| is - since you're sleepy anyway.
| OGWhales wrote:
| My understanding is that melatonin is useful for
| adjusting one's internal clock. As an example, if you
| were to change time zones you could use it to more
| quickly adjust to a new bed time.
|
| That's how I try to use it now, only when I want to
| adjust what time I get sleepy. For the same reason, I
| only take it for one or two nights. It doesn't make sense
| to take it continuously to me.
| kelnos wrote:
| Melatonin supplements are not good for napping. If it's
| having the proper effect, it should get your body into
| full sleep mode, and you'll want to get a full 8 hours or
| whatever. Forcing yourself up early will have the exact
| effect you describe.
|
| > _Taking it at night time doesn't quite show how
| powerful it is - since you're sleepy anyway._
|
| If you're already sleepy enough to fall asleep at what
| you deem to be a reasonable time, and you're able to
| sleep deeply enough for the length of time you want, then
| you probably don't need melatonin supplements.
| maksimur wrote:
| The point is taking it in the night if you're not able to
| get sleepy, especially if you fucked up your circadian
| rhythm. Taking it in the afternoon is going to fuck up
| the circadian rhythm if it wasn't already. For that
| you're better off taking chamomile and valerian.
| Palomides wrote:
| many people misunderstand melatonin, it isn't a sleeping
| pill, it's a tool for adjusting your circadian rhythm,
| taking it before a nap is crazy
| wpietri wrote:
| > And those studies suggest that melatonin plays a critical
| part in your circadian rhythm, which kind of implies that
| adding it to your food would also screw with your circadian
| rhythm. That alone seems like a good enough reason to
| caution against adding it into the food supply.
|
| I think you're correct. But electric light also screws with
| your circadian rhythm, and that's a concern almost nobody
| takes seriously. Years back I built my own automated
| lighting system [1] and the biggest thing I learned from it
| is that I'm not a responsible lightswitch user. My sleep
| schedule used to be very chaotic. But once I set up my
| screens and my house to dim and redshift in line with a
| regular day-night cycle, I not only started sleeping very
| regularly, but my mood and focus improved.
|
| When electric lighting was introduced it notably changed
| sleep schedules. [2] But we got used to that and just kinda
| went with it, even though surveys show massive problems
| with sleep. For me now it's a cautionary tale about how
| little we understand the impact of technologies we adopt.
|
| [1] https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise
|
| [2] E.g., the "'Til Morning is Nigh" segement here:
| https://backstoryradio.org/shows/on-the-clock-4/
| [deleted]
| 99_00 wrote:
| > The article suggests it's safer than current food additives,
| but I find that statement questionable. We don't understand the
| full effect of Melatonin on the human body, so I don't know how
| you can make that conclusion.
|
| Only allowing substances for which we understand the full
| effect on the human body is not a mainstream criteria or
| standard used by any agency in the world. I'm not aware of any
| substance for which we have a full understanding of the effect
| on the human body.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I think it was here, where I read that the optimal dosage for
| melatonin was 0.3 mg (300 micrograms).
|
| The smallest OTC dosage you can get, is 1mg, and they sell 10mg
| pills.
|
| When I switched from 10mg to 0.3mg, my sleep improved
| _drastically_. Also, I stopped getting those really weird
| dreams.
|
| But I don't like taking stuff, and ended up stopping
| completely, a long time ago.
| hughesjj wrote:
| > The smallest OTC dosage you can get, is 1mg
|
| Well, in the US yeah. It's banned OTC in France and the
| Netherlands will actually sell you the 0.3mg pills.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Is there a source for the 0.3mg, because the most sleep
| supplements around here I've tried seem to have at least
| 0.5mg, or at least 1mg. They contain a mixture of other
| things as well, like magnesium, leonurus cadiaca, humulus
| lupulus.
|
| Melatonin only supplements mostly seem to start at around
| 2mg. There may be few of them at 1mg.
|
| I can't tell if I've personally had any effects from
| melatonin specifically though. Sometimes I may have sleep
| issues and those nights, I think none of those supplements do
| anything.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Dunno about the US, but in Norway there a prescription
| version that's 2mg total in an extended release
| formulation. It's a fairly optimal dosage repeated
| throughout the night. It's technically meant for elderly
| people who can't stay asleep very well, but it's been
| pretty easy to get it off-label(doctors will basically be
| thrilled to be "drug-seeked" for just melatonin instead of
| benzos or Z-drugs for once, IME), and the price is
| reasonable, especially now there's a generic version.
|
| Did absolute wonders for my overall sleep quality anyway.
| And I struggle with both insomnia and frequent awakenings.
| vl wrote:
| Yes, just get liquid melatonin from Amazon and you can dose
| it super precisely using small syringe.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'll see if I can find the posting. It was a fairly
| exhaustive article. It was enough for me to give it a try.
|
| _EDIT: I think this was it. Looks like it 's had a couple
| of turns here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17632668_
| sottol wrote:
| Yes, I think that's the post. I was also just going to
| post that.
|
| What I ended up doing is buy smallest dose of melatonin
| gummy-bears (3mg afair) and they were easier to cut into
| smaller pieces/lower doses than pills.
|
| I occasionally use these to adjust my circadian rhythm.
| Naturally I go to bed around 2-4am but I have kids that
| wake us up at the crack of dawn.
| noodlenotes wrote:
| My nearby stores have started carrying 1 mg children's
| melatonin gummies.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Interesting. Are you certain that in those gummy-bears
| the melatonin would be spread around the gummy bear
| equally as opposed to being injected or similar into a
| single place? I'm not sure how they are combined with
| melatonin.
|
| Edit: looking around a bit, it does seem like melatonin
| or supplement ingredients are added and mixed before they
| are molded, so at least in theory it should be spread
| around fairly evenly.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| Just a suggestion for everyone that takes melatonin -- get
| some liquid drops. I have a bottle that has 3mg per 30
| drops, so I take 3 drops on my tongue an hour or two before
| I want to fall asleep. Liquid drops are the way to go.
|
| [I just posted this upthread, but reposting because I think
| it's a great way to go]
| kelnos wrote:
| I still use melatonin on occasion. When I first learned about
| it, I tried the 10mg version, and it never did anything for
| me. Years ago I read about 0.3mg being the correct dose, and
| gave that a try. I don't take it every night, but when I do,
| I sleep much better, and for longer without waking up.
|
| The main annoying thing about it is that you really need to
| take it a few hours before you go to sleep. So it's not
| something where you can realize that you're having trouble
| falling asleep, and take it only when needed. I have heard of
| some people where it does make them sleepy immediately after
| taking it, but I don't think that's a common reaction.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| This is 0.3 and not 3 right? I just checked and my pills
| are 3mg. If it's supposed to be 0.3 I will buy a new bottle
| immediately and see if it improves my sleep.
|
| 100% agree about taking it early, I get a bit of an "omg
| I'm sleepy" effect immediately, but I'm pretty sure it's
| placebo, I have to take it about 1-2 hours before I want to
| sleep. But it's still not super effective on its own.
| wincy wrote:
| I use 0.3mg and it has also improved my sleep
| drastically. It's not a typo. I also give it to my kids
| who had terrible problems with sleep (staying up until
| 1am and bad stuff) and it's made bedtime happen promptly.
| kyle_v wrote:
| [dead]
| esperent wrote:
| I take 3mg most nights and find it's an very effective
| asleep aid. I've tried breaking up the tablets to take
| around 1 to 0.5g but I don't feel like it does anything. Of
| course, this is purely anecdotal and it may well be
| placebo. But it works and as someone who often struggles
| with sleep I'm not gonna complain when I find something
| that helps, placebo or not.
|
| At worst, it's far less harmful than drugs, and at best, it
| may have a bunch of other benefits from reducing cancer
| risk to reducing depression, to helping with acid reflux
| and GERD - none yet proven though.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| Just a suggestion for everyone that takes melatonin -- get
| some liquid drops. I have a bottle that has 3mg per 30 drops,
| so I just take 3 drops on my tongue an hour or two before I
| want to fall asleep. Liquid drops are the way to go.
| ex3ndr wrote:
| I needed to cut small pills into 6 pieces to get optimal
| dosage, now i know why
| vl wrote:
| There is liquid version in the bottle which you can dose
| very precisely by using small syringe.
| lancesells wrote:
| I'll never take it again because of the dreams. If they were
| fun dreams I would maybe consider it but no. And it's crazy
| the dosages they sell.
| wheels wrote:
| Some random anecdata:
|
| I have a chronic sleep disorder, "Non-24 Sleep / Wake
| Disorder", which means my sleep floats pretty freely and
| doesn't naturally sync up with the sun. For the most part,
| I've structured my life for that to be ok, but sometimes it's
| not. I basically use melanin to bludgeon myself into a more
| normal sleep pattern when I have to. I usually start with 2
| mg, 30-60 minutes before I want to sleep, but often when that
| doesn't work, take another 3 mg, which usually gets the job
| done. Often I don't even notice 1-2 mg, but 5 mg does
| register reasonably strongly.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| I can attest to having weirder dreams and more nightmares
| when taking melatonin (3mg)
| joker_minmax wrote:
| They'd definitely need to disclose this, too. Imagine it being
| unsafe to operate machinery and drive just because you ate a
| bowl of berries. (Or for me, melatonin supplements always make
| me wired for some reason. I wouldn't want to feel caffienated
| after a bowl of berries.)
| nuxi wrote:
| Are you sure about the recoil? After all, "vitamin" D is a
| hormone and it's also added to a lot of different foods. And
| it's also uncontrolled in usage and dosage...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's a precursor to a hormone. And whether it's a vitamin
| depends on your sun exposure.
| conorh wrote:
| I don't think that is entirely correct (and mostly
| semantics). Vitamin D has multiple forms [1]
|
| _Vitamin D from the diet, or from skin synthesis, is
| biologically inactive. It is activated by two protein
| enzyme hydroxylation steps, the first in the liver and the
| second in the kidneys. Because vitamin D can be synthesized
| in adequate amounts by most mammals if they get enough
| sunlight, it is not essential and therefore is technically
| not a vitamin. Instead it can be considered a hormone, with
| activation of the vitamin D pro-hormone resulting in the
| active form, calcitriol, which then produces effects via a
| nuclear receptor in multiple locations._
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D
| wnevets wrote:
| > It's strange to me how Melatonin is so uncontrolled in usage,
| dosage, etc., despite being a hormone.
|
| You can thank Mel Gibson and industry lobbying [1][2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/supplements-a...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV2olDA0w8U
| hunson_abadeer wrote:
| > You can thank Mel Gibson and industry lobbying
|
| Why do we always need a boogeyman?
|
| Melatonin appears nearly harmless. Isn't it strange that
| we've grown so accustomed to so many things being restricted
| that we're taken aback by this sliver of medical self-
| determination, and we publish hard-hitting investigative
| pieces about how supposedly terrible that is?
|
| I get it that we maybe don't want to go back to the era of
| "patent medicine" containing radium, but when we require
| prescriptions for birth control, eyeglasses, and non-narcotic
| sleep aids, maybe we've gone a bit too far.
| maltyr wrote:
| Other hormones don't get the same treatment. I'm not sure why
| only melatonin is treated as a dietary supplement when the
| other hormones are not.
|
| For example, you can't get testosterone or epinephrine, over
| the counter. Maybe the only other hormones that are as
| readily available as melatonin are birth control pills, but
| those are considered pharmaceuticals, and regulated as such.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Well, what are the risks and downsides of testosterone and
| epinephrine vs. melatonin?
|
| Melatonin is so harmless I'm still not sure if it's a
| placebo half the time I take it.
| kbutler wrote:
| On a youth camping trip, one morning a boy found his (contraband)
| snacks had been raided. A raccoon (probably) had chewed through
| the tent, into his backpack, eaten various snacks, and opened his
| bottle of melatonin and eaten quite a few pills.
|
| I wonder what the effects were of a massive overdose of melatonin
| on an animal the size of a raccoon...
| burnished wrote:
| It probably took a nap? I'm not sure about raccoon biology but
| in humans melatonin is one of the least hazardous things. I'm
| not sure you can overdose on it practically speaking
| scotty79 wrote:
| Not even that. Melatonin works best as a sleep aid in small
| doses. Larger one have less effect.
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| Upper dose for melatonin has not been established, generally
| considered safe. https://ajac.substack.com/p/melatonin for
| references.
|
| I'm on 40mg every night, gives me deep restful sleep.
| deprecative wrote:
| As an insomniac I am jealous. I take prescription medication
| for it but nothing I've tried (both prescribed and over the
| counter) has ever been very restful.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Didn't see anything in the article about how much melatonin a
| person would get from eating food treated this way. I sometimes
| take small doses of melatonin during the summer months when my
| sleep pattern tends to drift if I don't actively keep it under
| control but wonder if consuming it through diet would end up
| making lots of people groggy during the day.
| Arrath wrote:
| Forget groggy, melatonin generally works as a sleep aid for me
| _but also_ gives me wildly trippy and fucked up dreams. I
| stopped using it specifically because of that.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's the best part, great way to induce lucid dreams
| consistently.
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| Your dosage was likely too high. I had the same issue using
| the smallest dose I could find at the pharmacy (5mg) and it
| was totally fixed by going to a pill one fifteenth of the
| dosage that I procured online.
| Arrath wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised, they were plain OTC 10mg pills but
| as I read in an article posted fairly recently on HN I
| learned that the required dose is often much, much smaller
| than that. My foray with melatonin was a few years ago and
| I'm not having trouble sleeping now so I haven't dipped my
| toes into it again.
| Zetice wrote:
| Just to confirm, my limited understanding is that 10mg is
| an incredibly high dosage.
| Arrath wrote:
| As is mine, now. Back in the wild days of 2016 or so
| advice online said "just go get some melatonin and you'll
| sleep!" and the bottle said to take 1 or 2 an hour before
| you want to sleep, so off I went.
| neteresy wrote:
| Wait until you read this: "Oral administration of 1,000
| mg a day of melatonin to five adults for 25 to 30 days
| resulted in drowsiness being noted as an adverse effect.
| There were no severe and/or irreversible impacts on
| clinical parameters (blood pressure, heart rate, ECG,
| serum chemistry, urine analysis) in these people."
| Source: Nordlund JJ, Lerner AB. The effects of oral
| melatonin on skin color and on the release of pituitary
| hormones. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1977
| npunt wrote:
| I take 300mcg time release and it gives me more vivid
| dreams. Stuff is powerful
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| 0.3mg is the dose you want, apparently
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-
| th...
| mechhacker wrote:
| Thank you. Man, that explains a lot of my easy to sleep
| but wake up early in the morning issues.
| 89vision wrote:
| I bite off tiny pieces of 5mg pills. One pill lasts me
| about a week and a half
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I did this too. Someone had told me at one point the best
| thing to do to ingest it is to crush it somehow and keep
| it under your tongue for 30 seconds. And I also knew I
| wanted very small amounts of the pills I had. So I would
| take the tiniest nibbles of the chalky pills and leave
| them in my mouth for a while, until I could feel the
| effects slightly come on. Grew weirdly fond of the taste.
| orev wrote:
| It seems like that would be very hard to get a consistent
| dose with such a small amount. Those cuts would need to
| be extremely precise. It would be more reliable to buy
| the 1mg children's dose and cut them in half.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Melatonin causes wild dreams for me, too, but I actually
| enjoy them. Free cinema.
| scythe wrote:
| Good question. The paper says 0.1 mmol per liter, i.e. fruit is
| sprayed with a solution containing about 23 milligrams per
| liter of melatonin.
|
| It's possible that the amount retained would be less than a few
| milliliters of solution equivalent -- less than 100 micrograms
| under practical consumption patterns -- so having little
| activity. But if the melatonin is absorbed by the fruit, the
| effect could be significant and particularly problematic since
| people often eat fruit in the morning.
|
| In any case, I think that a more likely goal of this research
| (vs actually spraying commercial fruit with melatonin) might be
| to identify compounds able to produce the same beneficial
| effect on fruit without causing any adverse effects in humans.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| You will take the drugs. And you will be happy.
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