Case study: Melatonin

gwern

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

And what evidence do you have that it works the way you say without side effects... ? My self-experiments with Provigil say that nothing can reduce my long term need to sleep without severely deteriorating my mental capacity. Plural of anecdote being data...

And what evidence do you have that it works the way you say without side effects... ?

Feel free to go through WP, all the studies linked in various places on this page, and every study that 2 seconds on Google & Google Scholar would turn up, and explain them all away.

My self-experiments with Provigil say that nothing can reduce my long term need to sleep without severely deteriorating my mental capacity.

I never said you needed less sleep. I said you needed less time for sleep; they're not the same thing. Not every minute spent in bed 'sleeping' i... (read more)

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Case study: Melatonin

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Case study: Melatonin

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