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

Surely you wouldn't have to stay in your room 24 hours a day? You could go outside when the light and dark of your artificial cycle and the natural cycle coincided, couldn't you? I don't know how sensitive human clocks are - maybe going out at nine a.m. right after you woke up when you're trying to fool yourself into "thinking" it's noon would create problems having to do with the exact location of the sun - but it seems like there would be a window there.

You're right, of course. I'll do the calculations.

Assume I want to shift my sleep cycle 4 hours ahead (i.e. wake up 4 hours earlier, 8am instead of noon).

We currently have sunrise and sunset roughly at 6:30 and 17:00 local time. I assume for simplicity that this remains constant and also ignore DST.

I'll want to simulate sunrise at 2:30 am and sunset at 13:00. So assuming the sun is "properly up" (high enough) starting at 7am, I can go outside from 7am-1200 and again after sunset at 1700. I have to stay at home during the night (for artificial li... (read more)

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Case study: Melatonin

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Case study: Melatonin

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