Can Melatonin improve your sleeping habits because sleep is essential to work at our optimum best? Also, it boosts our overall wellbeing.
Insomnia and other sleep disorders may affect your sleep quality. This, in turn, makes you feel cranky and tired the next day.
An energetic mind and body keep you cheerful and alert throughout the day.
What is Melatonin?
Melatonin is a hormone produced by your pineal gland in your brain. This pea-sized gland helps your body to distinguish between sleeping and waking up time. Also called sleep hormone melatonin is a powerful antioxidant that provides various other benefits to your body.
During the night your body produces this sleep hormone in large quantities. The hormone levels begin to shoot up once the sun goes down. Alternatively, the levels drop during the morning time.
Body clock and the amount of light that you get each day are the deciding factors in the amount of Melatonin that your body produces.
Along with inducing sleep, Melatonin treats stomach ulcers, supports eye health, subsides heartburn, eases tinnitus symptoms, and increases the growth hormone levels in men.
Melatonin is available as a supplement in the form of liquid, pills and chewable tablets as well as in natural and artificial forms. The natural supplement is obtained from the pineal gland in animals.
How Does it Work?
This sleep hormone works along with your body’s circadian rhythm otherwise known as the body’s internal clock. Moreover, Melatonin helps to regulate your blood pressure, body temperature and hormone levels.
Its levels start to rise when it becomes dark outside. Also, it helps your body to relax by binding to receptors. For example, it binds to brain receptors to reduce nerve activity and reduces dopamine levels in your eyes to keep you awake.
In short, it helps your body to relax and makes you to sleep. Conversely, people who don’t make enough of it struggle to fall asleep. Low levels of Melatonin are caused due to many factors.
Smoking, stress, exposure to too much light during the night( including the blue light), aging and shift work drastically affect the production of Melatonin. Supplementing it in your diet helps to normalize your internal clock.
Who Should Take it?
People with the following conditions can find melatonin supplementation useful.
- Insomnia
- Delayed sleep phase disorder
- Sleep work disorder where jobs disrupt regular sleep schedules
- And to prevent or treat jet lag.
Is it Safe to Supplement it?
Melatonin usually brings fewer side effects than other sleep medicines.
Melatonin may cause problems if you take it along with blood thinners, medications that suppress the immune system, birth control pills, and diabetes drugs.
It can cause the following symptoms
Headache
Day time sleepiness
Dizziness
Anxiety
Stomach discomfort
Crankiness
Short-lived depression
And a heavy head feeling
Whenever you want to supplement Melatonin, have a word with your doctor. Experts in WebMD write that it’s always better to take a synthetic form of Melatonin than the natural one because natural versions may contain viruses.
What’s the Appropriate Dosage?
According to the National Sleep Foundation, you can take a typical dosage of 1 to 3 mg. This amount may elevate your blood melatonin levels to 1 to 20 times normal. Ryan Raman MS MD writes in Healthline that you can start with 0.5 mg or 500 mcg or 1 mg thirty minutes before your sleeping time.
If you don’t get satisfied results, then try increasing your dosage to three to five milligrams. However, your goal must be to find the lowest dose that will help you to fall asleep. Always follow the instructions that come with the supplement. If you’re unsure its best to visit your doctor.
Does Melatonin Really Work?
Research studies show that taking this supplement helps you to fall asleep. Scientists
Moreover, Melatonin also helps to overcome jet lag by synching your internal clock with the time change. An analytical review of 10 studies found that supplementing Melatonin for people who traveled five or more time zones significantly reduced the effects of jet lag.
Other Health Benefits
Apart from helping you to fall asleep, Melatonin has the following benefits
- It supports eye health.
- May treat heartburn and stomach ulcers.
- Could help with seasonal depression
- Can assist in increasing growth hormone levels in men.
- Could reduce symptoms of tinnitus.
If you’re planning to supplement Melatonin, consult your doctor and tell her about any medications that you may be taking. Reducing stress and maintaining a healthy diet can also improve your sleep quality.