Dr. Michael Grandner

If you have a conditioned arousal, your body already knows it's nighttime, still can't sleep.

So taking melatonin is almost never going to work to treat an insomnia condition.

But if you don't have conditioned arousal, if you just need a little bit of a boost, actually melatonin probably works just fine.

It's also, you produce it natural.

During the day, your levels are almost non-existent.

They start rising in the early evening.

They pick up, they peak during the night, and then they drop off right about the time you expect the sun to come up.

And light suppresses it.

So even if you're at peak levels during the night, turn on a bright bathroom light, plummets.

Then you turn off the light.

As long as the clock still thinks it's nighttime, it'll regenerate them again.

might take a delay, especially the older you get, the less flexible the system is, but that happens naturally.

Now, some people, when they take melatonin, they might be taking the wrong dose at the wrong time.

So the way we started using melatonin as a treatment for something was

Our natural rhythms are about 24 hours.

So some creatures, they use light from the sun.

So like when you put a blanket over a bird's cage, they'll go to sleep because their natural melatonin starts spiking as soon as it's dark.

And then it suppresses as soon as it's light.

Humans, we have mammals, we have our own internal clock that guesses what time it is.

So we could be in a cave and still keep a roughly 24-hour cycle.