If you are a night owl who normally stays up past midnight, but would like to nod off around 11 p.m., take melatonin at 6 p.m. Don’t take melatonin right before bed because it takes several hours for it to become effective. Andrefsky offers these tips for using melatonin: However, many people turn to melatonin for chronic or occasional insomnia and experience mixed results, because they use it too frequently, take higher-than-necessary doses or don’t time it properly. For instance, if you attend a conference on the West Coast and return to Cleveland, you'll shift back to your normal bedtime and awaken more normally in three days, which corresponds with the three-hour time difference. Melatonin helps travelers because when you cross time zones, your body naturally “corrects” one hour lost or gained every 24 hours. A synthesized form of the naturally occurring hormone, which is secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, was patented by MIT in 1995 and is widely available as a pill or chewable gummy candy. How Melatonin WorksĪlthough billed as a cure-all for insomnia, melatonin is not a perfect antidote for sleeplessness. Andrefsky says melatonin is more useful in mitigating jetlag than in curing chronic insomnia, so it can be an effective tool for people who travel leisurely or for business. “Melatonin affects when you fall asleep, not how quickly.”ĭr. “Melatonin decreases sleep latency by about six minutes, which is not a lot of time considering people sometimes can’t fall asleep for 45 minutes, an hour or two hours,” he says. Neurologist and sleep medicine specialist John Andrefsky, MD isn’t surprised. It’s been a rough day and you must wake up early tomorrow for a breakfast meeting, so you take a melatonin pill, brush your teeth and crawl into bed.

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