Comment · Fri, June 21, 2013 · Ceretropic
does Melatonin have to be taken when it's night time?
What they were answering
panfist · 3 points
I would really like to hear your thoughts on this study where teens were administered 1mg melatonin between 4-630pm.
We conclude that a small dose of melatonin given daily, administered in the afternoon, could advance the sleep timing and make the students more alert during school days even if they continued their often irregular sleep habits during weekends.
edit: forgot to include link to study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23005039
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
Here is the full study: http://ge.tt/4Ozb5zj/v/0?c
>This study did not compare melatonin administration
in the afternoon with such in the evening, but focused on
the former. Its main advantage is the more or less persist-
ent circadian phase advance, not achieved after evening
administration (Burgess et al., 2008). When the wake up
time is fixed, as with school children, the patient will
probably be more alert and more ready for the important
breakfast meal (Micha et al., 2010), even if this, to our
knowledge, is not yet shown in a study. Afternoon admin-
istration also permits intermittent medication without
immediate relapse of delayed sleep onset (Eckerberg,
2009). Even a single weekend dose seems to have some
effect (Yang et al., 2001). Even if no side effects of the con-
tinuous long-term use of melatonin has been noted up
till now (Van Geijlswijk et al., 2011), some caution
might be recommendable.
They did not try administering it later in the evening. They postulate that taking it later will result in it being harder to maintain a fixed wake-up time. However, they admit that their postulation does not have any data corroborating it at this time.
A clear disadvantage of early melatonin administration is the soporific effect. During the first few days with melatonin administration, nearly half of the students in this study had experienced some degree of fatigue during 1 or 2 hrs following capsule intake. This MT1-mediated effect is more evident when the homeostatic pressure for sleep is high (Wyatt et al., 2006). Thus, during the M2 week, when much of the sleep debt, presumably, was paid off, only four of the students experienced some post-capsule fatigue.
So they acknowledge the issue with taking melatonin earlier in the day causing sleepiness, but do not show any data that taking it later would cause an inability to maintain a fixed wake-up time. This means that another study would have to be done to get some data on it. But you can certainly try it out on your own and get some anecdotal results. Take 1mg melatonin at 4:30pm, and see how it affects you. Then on another day, do the same thing but 30 min before bed.