Dr. Stacy Sims

They are not.

Their cells are not fine, Stephen.

No.

No.

It can be a tool in the toolkit.

Most of the time, you know, most people are taking too high a dose of melatonin, which is actually doing more harm than good.

Well, it's actually shutting off part of the brain to be able to help control their circadian rhythm.

And then they're completely dependent upon it.

And it's such an artificial induction.

It's going to wear out of their system.

Yeah.

So your melatonin is supposed to rise, help you go to sleep, and then it falls at a rate for when you're going to wake up so that when it's lower, you're going to wake up and your cortisol will naturally rise.

Melatonin can be helpful in very low doses.

Yeah, so I often recommend, you know, the patients take maybe like a milligram, but you have to buy a children's melatonin very often for that dose of it because people are taking these huge, huge amounts over the counter.

You can just get so much.

And so what you want to make sure is that if you're using it, you're going to take melatonin at a time where you're going to be able to go to sleep about 30 minutes afterward too because people are also using melatonin and then not allowing themselves the restful moment when it's trying to kick in.

Mm-hmm.

And then they're taking more or they're staying up later and they're suppressing their brain's ability to make their own melatonin.

But magnesium can be advantageous as well, especially if you're on your menstrual cycle and you're having menstrual related sleep.

So I think that's an important thing.