Does Melatonin Actually Help You Sleep?

Having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep at night? "Take melatonin!" someone might say to you. "It will help you go to sleep!" they might tell you. So you take melatonin right before you get in bed, and you still find yourself lying awake at night yet again. So does melatonin actually help you sleep? Or are the people telling you to take melatonin complete idiots? 

A bottle of melatonin gummies

Melatonin is not a hoax, as some people believe. It does help you fall asleep and stay asleep but it all depends on when you take it, how often you take it, and how much you take. Melatonin is not something you take to completely knock you out at night. It decreases the time it takes for you to fall asleep by six minutes, so it does not affect how fast you fall asleep all that much. Melatonin in the form of pills or gummies that people take is not a drug- it is a synthesized form of a naturally occurring bodily hormone. Melatonin is secreted by the pineal gland in the human brain, and it is mainly released at night. 

Image showing how darkness and sunlight affect the release of melatonin in the brain

When it is nighttime and dark out, melatonin levels in your body rise, and these levels stay high. When the sun comes up in the morning and melatonin levels drop, it causes you to wake up.  Melatonin acts on repressors in your body, and induces sleep. The secretion of melatonin is a regulated by a negative feedback loop. When you take melatonin, it just adds to your body's supply of melatonin, inducing sleep more efficiently. If you want melatonin to work effectively, you must take it 1-2 hours before you go to sleep. It takes this amount of time to work, so taking it right before you go to bed still leave you laying in your bed awake. 

Model of Melatonin Signaling

This model explains how melatonin signaling works at a biological level. Of course looking at this picture you might be thinking, "What the heck am I looking at?! There's noooo way this is happening inside my body!!!!!!!" Well, you're wrong, The human body does all kinds of incredible things, and I am going to try try to put this image into words that are easier to interpret. First, what happens is that darkness stimulates the pineal gland to release melatonin. Then melatonin binds to a GCPR which activates all sorts of proteins and signal for a cellular response, which in this case, is sleep. 

Image of a woman sleeping, showing that the melatonin in her body induced sleep

There is another misconception about taking melatonin to help you sleep that I am here to knock: a larger dose of melatonin will not help you fall asleep faster, or for longer. The average dosage for an adult taking melatonin is 2 mg at most. A lot of brands sell 10 mg of melatonin as a way to make more money, but this high of a dosage will do absolutely nothing more than 2 mg, or even less. Some studies even show that taking a lower dosage of melatonin can be more effective than a higher dosage. 

In order to get the best results from melatonin, you must avoid bright lights right before falling asleep. Darkness is what signals for the melatonin in your brain to start inducing sleep, so looking at bright screens such as phone, or computers, or television screens, will all interfere with melatonins effectiveness. When the sun comes up in the morning, melatonin levels will drop in your body so taking melatonin will not make it so you can't wake up in the morning. This also means you cannot just take some melatonin and expect it to knock you out in the middle of the afternoon for a nap. 

The timing of when you take melatonin is very important considering how it affects your body. For example, if you take melatonin at the wrong time, it could mess with your sleep schedule. Taking melatonin incorrectly could lead to many side effects, such as nausea, dizziness, headache, drowsiness, and irritability.  

Image of a melatonin molecule

Some people believe that melatonin only helps people sleep because of the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a beneficial effect that is produced by a placebo , which is a something that does not actually have agents that would lead to treatment. Insomnia is a cycle, in which you cannot fall asleep which makes you anxious, and then during the day you worry about not being able to fall asleep that night, which causes you to tell yourself you are unable to fall asleep, and the cycle just goes on. Melatonin can reset your internal clock, but not knock you out completely. For some people struggling with insomnia, melatonin will ease the anxiety of not being able to fall asleep. This causes a placebo effect because thinking melatonin will help you sleep will put your mind at ease, causing you to be able to fall asleep. This may be why melatonin works for some people, but there is also science behind how it actually works in the body!

For pretty much my whole life I have struggled with anxiety when it comes to falling asleep. This stems around the fact that I am a person who needs a full night of sleep if my day is going to go well the following day, and when it's time to go to bed I always tell myself I need to fall asleep right away. Of course me not being able to fall asleep causes me to become anxious that I will never fall asleep, and that carries with me the next night. I started taking melatonin before bed during quarantine, and it has definitely helped me significantly. After doing this research, I'm not sure if I have been taking melatonin correctly because I usually only take it 30 minutes to an hour before I go to bed, but I think it definitely puts my mind at ease. I am going to try to start taking melatonin at the correct time, because I'm sure it will have even further benefits to helping me fall asleep. 

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