I’ve tried melatonin to help me get to sleep. It helped for a while, but then stopped. Do you have any other recommendations to help me go to sleep?
Before you give up on melatonin, be sure that you’re taking the right dose. Often people who think melatonin doesn’t work for them are simply taking too much of it.
Here’s why. In the brain, melatonin interacts with specific receptors. Research has shown that these receptors are highly sensitive to the amount of melatonin they’re exposed to. Bombard them with too much melatonin for a long enough period of time, and the receptors become so desensitized that they don’t respond to it at all. At that point, no amount of melatonin will help you get to sleep.
This is a problem because most melatonin products are available only in doses ranging from 1 mg to 10 mg, far above the optimal 0.3 mg dose. For a few nights, this higher dose works fine. But as receptor desensitization occurs, problems sleeping return—sometimes worse than before.
This could be why you had good results using melatonin for a while, then they began to tail off. I highly encourage you to try it again at a lower dose and see what happens.
Learn more about the most effective way to switch to lower doses of melatonin to help you get to sleep.
