Melatonin Pros and Cons for Sleep

In this episode of Healthspan Digest, Aaron Shaw dives deep into the science of melatonin. As a healthspan coach, occupational therapist, and strength and conditioning specialist, Aaron explores the role melatonin plays in our sleep-wake cycles, the benefits and potential drawbacks of supplementing, and how it might help improve sleep quality in the short term.

Using his own personal experience with melatonin during a road trip, Aaron highlights both the pros and cons of melatonin supplementation, addressing its effectiveness for jet lag, shift work, and sleep onset issues. However, he also warns about the risks of over-reliance on the supplement and stresses the importance of sleep hygiene and behavioral changes as more sustainable solutions for long-term sleep problems.

Tune in to learn:

•How melatonin works with your body’s natural circadian rhythm

•When to use melatonin as a tool for improving sleep

•The potential downsides of over-supplementing

•Practical tips to improve your sleep hygiene without needing supplements

Whether you struggle with occasional sleeplessness or are curious about natural ways to boost your sleep quality, this episode is packed with science-backed insights and practical advice to help you sleep better and improve your healthspan.

Listen now, and don’t forget to follow for more tips on optimizing your health and well-being!

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Transcript

Aaron Shaw (00:00)
We all know how important sleep is and we are highly aware of how important this is when we don't get high quality sleep. So we know that sleep improves our mood, improves our cognitive status, literally our mental health, our emotional health is related to high quality sleep. The recovery from the wear and tear of exercise and activity during the day depends on high quality sleep, our hormones and our metabolism, all these amazing things happen when we sleep well. So sleep.

is an essential pillar of healthspan. But what happens when we struggle sleeping? Today we're gonna talk about the role of melatonin, potentially using it as a supplement to improve our sleep and get all the benefits of sleep.

My name is Aaron Shaw and I'm a healthspan coach and an occupational therapist and strength and conditioning specialist and an absolute nerd when it comes to all things related to health and wellness and fitness. And I've used melatonin in the past and I've used it to experiment a little bit during a time when I was not sleeping well. Specifically, I was driving coast to coast and it was a long drive and it was big days of

like 12 hours behind the wheel most days. And so needless to say, Hey, by landing at a hotel, it's some weird town that I'm not used to, used to being in after being highly attentive all day long. It was hard to wind down hard to fall asleep. And so I decided to try this supplement, tried using melatonin as a way to help improve my sleep and recover from.

really kind of being buzzed on the road all day from all the stimulation of driving and being super attentive all day long.

So the question is, did me taking melatonin on this three day road trip help with my sleep? Well, I can tell you the answer is if you check out my website, which I'll link below, I do sell melatonin in my website store. So that's kind of the punchline here for this specific use that I found where melatonin helped me. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about the science of melatonin.

what its effects are and how to use it or how to maybe consider using it as a tool to improve your sleep.

But we have to start off by asking what is melatonin? So melatonin, think if you peruse the ever-growing aisle of supplements in any store or any grocery store or health food store, you're going to see melatonin. Melatonin is actually a hormone that our body naturally produces. It's produced by this gland, this pineal gland. And our body is stimulated to produce this in response to darkness.

So it was really effective in regulating our sleep wake cycle. It tends to peak in the evening. So we'll have our body will produce more melatonin in the evening, which will help initiate our sleep, help us feel a little bit tired. And then as the day comes, as sunlight starts to come in the morning and light increases, then our body produces less melatonin. And so it's this, I always think of this as like kind of the wave of

The sleeping wake cycle is the wave that is very much tied to sunlight, very much tied to sunrise and sunset. Melatonin is a big driver in that wave. We have to also talk about circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythm is just that. It's a natural rhythm that our body will have a bunch of

Internal reactions that will make us tired during certain times and then peak our alertness during other times and melatonin is key to this circadian rhythm. So melatonin signals the body that it's time to sleep and it plays a role in adjusting the body's internal clock. There are natural influences on melatonin levels. So light exposure is, you know, I would say probably hands down short of any sort of, you know, metabolic problem.

you know, disease or whatnot, but light exposure is going to have the most impact on our melatonin production. And this is especially blue light from screens. So we all have these wonderful devices that we're staring in, you know, what seems like nearly all day long, all waking hours. So we'll just, whether it's a smartphone or computer screen, we're staring at screens all day long. And I would bet that some of you are looking at a screen before you even get out of bed.

And I would also bet that you may even be looking at a screen up to the last three, four or five minutes before you turn your light off at the end of the night. And so what that is doing is suppressing. is limiting your body's natural production of melatonin. So by staring at screens, we are lowering our melatonin, therefore impacting our body's ability to say, it's time. Let's, you it's going to.

slow our body's ability to rest, to fall asleep, to go to sleep.

So we have to agree that, and we have to acknowledge that staring at a screen is going to screw up your sleep, especially if you're doing it in bed, especially if you're doing it near bedtime, even like 45 minutes an hour before bedtime. you're getting, basically your brain thinks that you're staring at the sun, if there's light in your eyeballs, that it must be the middle of the day. So there's no reason for your body to produce melatonin. So why would your body want to be a

you know, falling asleep midday, there's bright light. your brain thinks that you're sitting out on the back porch with the sunlight in your face, there's no reason for your body to produce melatonin. Well, that's exactly what's happening when you're staring at your screen right before bed and the hour leading up to bed. So we have to recognize that this is going to influence our melatonin levels. What also influences our melatonin levels, unfortunately, is aging. And if you are

Lucky enough, you're going to keep aging and that's great. But the problem is as we age, our natural production of melatonin tends to decrease. So therefore it's not uncommon as we get older and you can speak to, you know, talk to your parents or grandparents or whatnot. And many of them will talk about how, how much harder it is to sleep than it used to be. It's because our body is their body is literally producing less of this.

sleep aid, this natural sleep aid, so they don't sleep as well.

So let's think about how we would maybe supplement with melatonin to improve our sleep. So what are the short-term uses for maybe a specific sleep problem or melatonin may come in handy? One thing would be jet lag. So jet lag, there's some evidence that supports that it's that melatonin can, the effectiveness of melatonin can help in adjusting the body's clock across different time zones. it's one thing just to, you know,

living on the East Coast right now. So to fly up and down the East Coast, same time zone, not a big deal. But to fly cross country where we get two, three hours time zone difference, that can be a tough thing to manage. Or much less if you're doing an international flight where there's multiple time zones, then that's really tough on the body. It's really tough also just for your body to figure out, you know, what's your light exposure during that time if you are flying. Because, you know, everything with flying is really tough on the body.

Evidence shows that melatonin can help with adjusting you to whatever time zone you're going to.

There's also some research that shows that melatonin can help with people who do shift work. So with these irregular work schedules, it's really hard to get your body in the habit of time to wind down, the time to wake back up and to be engaged and active. so melatonin has been shown to help with people sleeping during these irregular schedules.

Melatonin may also be good for people with disorders of delayed sleep. So people who have difficulty falling asleep early, sometimes melatonin can help those people reset their sleep patterns, to fall asleep earlier. Earlier meaning like an appropriate time to fall asleep.

So in summary, there have been clinical trials that found that melatonin can, and this is like supplementing with melatonin, can reduce the amount of time to fall asleep. And there was one meta analysis that said it reduced the time to fall asleep by seven to 12 minutes. So again, this would be for people who get in bed, lay in bed, toss and turn, can't fall asleep, may or may not even be tired. Maybe you are tired, but you just can't fall asleep.

there are some evidence that melatonin can help you fall asleep. And I think that there are a lot of people out there that once asleep, things are good for many, many hours, but the struggle is literally just falling asleep. And melatonin has been shown to help with that.

But there are drawbacks and there are drawbacks like, if anything's too good to be true, yes, it's too good to be true. So let's talk about the drawbacks and limitations of melatonin. So first and foremost, it is not a cure for insomnia. is, you know, people who have long-term sleep issues need to have something more than just a dose of supplement of melatonin to help manage their

long-term sleep issues, they're in maybe chronic insomnia. And of course, as a disclaimer, which I should make very clear that supplementing with things like this, you should definitely be talking to a physician or health professional that deals with supplements or medications or whatnot, because everybody's case is unique.

And I'll also add in here that for people who have chronic sleep problems, what's really key is sleep hygiene and behavioral changes around bedtime and around really kind of maybe throughout the day even, that can be more effective for people with chronic sleep problems than melatonin. So there's a benefit to looking at things in a big picture, not just grabbing a melatonin supplement off the shelf. Because it is a supplement, just like anything else that you would be pulling off the shelf that's a medicine or a

medication or supplement, there are side effects. Some side effects could be dizziness, headaches, even nausea in some people. So the idea of taking a supplement to maybe help you fall asleep just to wake up later feeling nauseous sounds like a net zero to me. there's been a bunch of research on melatonin using research or using melatonin over time, but there's

not a ton of research on long-term use of melatonin. So that's all the more reason to be mindful of if you're going to experiment with using melatonin to improve your sleep, be mindful of how long you're going to do it for and maybe think about being very precise. this is not a lifestyle any more than you would consider taking a big dose of NyQuil before going to bed.

because it will help you sleep for sure. Should that be like the plan for sleeping? No, it's an indication that there's bigger problems if you have to take something all the time to sleep. again, check with your physician on that. the nighttime rituals are going to be a big deal on your sleep quality. And we'll talk about that in a minute.

The other point worth mentioning here is that some over-the-counter doses of melatonin can really actually exceed the amount that our body naturally produces. So even if you are looking for a little bit of help, looking for little bit of, you know, some assistance to fall asleep, the recommended doses that are in some of these supplements exceeds what your body would even naturally produce. So you have to ask yourself, you know, if my body is supposed to be producing

you know, let's say 0.5 milligrams of melatonin. Why would you consider taking maybe five milligrams as opposed to 0.5? So should you be taking a mega dose of something that your body naturally produces and taking this dose that far exceeds what your body would ever normally do? That's questionable. Be very careful with that. And again, talk to, talk to somebody about that before.

doing a massive dose of something like that. So be mindful of typically the body produces about 0.5 milligrams of melatonin naturally. So if you overdose with it, if you take a massive dose, yeah, it's going to roll out, you know, certainly make you drowsy, but it's also going to screw up your hormone, the way your hormones work. And that is just not worth it.

So the best practice for a lot of people is really just kind of starting with a really low dose and seeing how your body responds to it. So you can always gradually ramp up a dose of anything over time as you need to. But if you come in and basically overdose with it right from the get-go, you may be missing, you know, the subtlety of a benefit getting just what you need and not overdoing it.

And adding melatonin to your diet, or adding melatonin, supplementing melatonin to your nutrition can actually interfere with other medications. melatonin can interfere with blood thinners, immunosuppressants, diabetes medications. so don't make matters worse. If you are already taking some medication for some reason, please consult your physician before.

just going to the drug store and starting to take a dose of melatonin just so you can sleep a little bit better. So please realize that you may help one thing, you may help with your sleep a little bit, but you may also have some really negative consequences on medications that you need for something else. So there are pros and cons. The punchline here is there are pros and cons to supplementing with melatonin. The pros are helping the body reset the internal clock.

So again, this is like jet lag and shift work. And in my experience, it did help me for a short period of time, for a couple of nights, it helped me navigate travel. And when I was on the road for 12 hours a day and needed to kind of, in a sense, hurry up and fall asleep and then get up the next day and do it again. Yes, it actually helped me. And that's why I believe in having it in my, you know, in my, in my bathroom medicine cabinet, if you will.

So it is there if needed for me. And so I am an advocate of having it as a potential tool in very specific reasons. So the pros are it will help reset the body's internal clock. It is for most people typically safe for short-term use if you take it in the recommended dose and don't overdose with it. And it may help sleep the onset of sleep for people that struggle with that component of sleep. the, again, this could be in people that are

older whose bodies aren't really producing that much melatonin anymore and it can be useful for people who are have kind of erratic schedules shift work.

But too good to be true, yes, there are cons. There are definitely cons to melatonin. It doesn't work for, or it's less effective in people with chronic insomnia, severe sleep disorders. You can over supplement, you can cause more harm than good. You can.

If not, if you're not careful, could just say, well, if I take a bunch of melatonin, it's going to make me fall asleep or I'll sleep a little bit better in a sense, I don't say drug induced because it is a hormone, but I mean in the supplemented sort of way. But the risk is you are artificially putting yourself to sleep, just like taking a dose of, like I said, a dose of NyQuil to help you sleep. Will NyQuil or something similar

knock you out in a drug induced coma for six or eight hours. Yeah. Is that really the best thing for your body? I think we can say no, it's not. So the cons may be that it distracts you from making broader, healthier changes in your life that are more natural.

So I want us to think about something. Let's think about some alternatives to melatonin. So as needed, of course, if you need to take a supplement to help you sleep because of a certain very specific situation, then so be it. But what are some alternatives that we could do to sleep well? Again, sleep is cognitive function, sleep is physical function, sleep is your immune system function, sleep is natural, you your hormones do all these things as we sleep,

as we recover from the wear and tear and stress of the day and prepare for the next day, prepare for the next day's demands. So sleep is critically important to healthspan. It is a pillar of healthspan. So we need it, but what are some ways that we can maximize the sleep, get all the amazing benefits of sleep without needing to reach for something to supplement? Well, this is going to be a tough one, but.

Stop looking at screens. Stop looking at screens an hour before you go to bed. So let's take a minute and imagine this, visualize this. Imagine tonight, and I would maybe this is a challenge for you tonight. Tonight, one hour before the time you want to go to bed, I challenge you to turn off the TV, shut down your phone, get your face away from the phone.

Get away from the computer for one hour before you go to bed. And I think that even saying that there's probably some people that are, you may feel a little panicked like, my God, like, what am I supposed to do with myself? Well, remember staring at a screen and I don't care whether you have blue light glasses or whatever, not is still light going into your eyeballs. it's just like, you know, looking at the sun or being outside during the day, when there's light coming into your eyes, your body says,

It's time to be awake. It's time to be awake. It's time to be engaged. Time to be stimulated. So it's hard to imagine sitting out on your, you know, on your patio or going for a walk out in the sun during the day. again, these lights are like a bright sunny day from these screens. It's hard to have that. And then also imagine, I'm just going to close my eyes and fall asleep in the middle of the day. Well, that's essentially what we're asking our body to do. So one hour before you go to bed,

No screens, zero screens. Second thing you're gonna do instead of taking melatonin would be lower the temperature in your room, in your bedroom. So we're talking like 68 degrees, which is cooler than what a lot of people may feel comfortable with, but research is clear, like mid to upper 60s temperature is perfect for getting deep, high quality sleep. Next thing you can do is create a consistent sleep schedule. So again, this would be

making sure you're going to bed really at the same time, seven days a week. And I think that the challenge for some people who weekends, you know, get off by more than 30 minutes or sometimes for some people it's hours, hours later, hours, you know, just get really screwed up. You're basically, you're creating yourself a problem because your body, you're changing your circadian rhythms. You're trying to, you know, stay up later than you normally would go to bed later than you normally would. And then switch back during their work week, you're making matters.

far worse. So a consistent sleep schedule is going to be key as well. So you've got yourself tonight, you've got yourself a reasonable bedtime, a consistent bedtime. You've dropped the temperature in your bedroom to 67, 68 degrees. You haven't looked at a screen for at least an hour before you go to bed. You can sit up in bed or sit on your couch and read a book. That would be pretty cool. Do some reading before you go to bed. And I mean reading like a book, like with paper.

like a real actual book. And if you did all of those things and worked on

those components of sleep hygiene, you may find that you don't need to reach for a supplement to fall asleep. And I think if you are not addressing those things, then you are creating your own problem. You are creating your own problem. So when you are staring at the phone and you hop into bed and 15 minutes after you turn the lights out in the bedroom,

And your body's still awake and you're thinking, this is terrible. I'm a terrible sleeper. Well, no, you just have terrible habits. And so it's, need to adjust your expectations. If you're going to be staring, essentially telling your body that you're going to be staring into the sun, which is staring into a screen. Your body says, well, we don't need to make any, you know, we don't need to produce any melatonin because it's the middle of the day. So you have that under your control. So you've turned off screens, you've dimmed your lights.

And you've taken a little chill time. Maybe you do some deep breathing. That will definitely help. am also, I'll tell you another little hack that I have for a sleeping well is I actually use a pillow spray and I love it so much. It's actually in my, on my website store as well. It is this fragrant and again, I'm not like a fragrant necessarily kind of person, but this is pillow spray that is at this point, it kind of stimulates my brain to say, this is bedtime. Cause it's smells.

dare I say calming. And so it's definitely part of a routine that I've created for my own sleep hygiene and it works for me.

So in addition to getting my face away from the screen, dimming lights. even literally, like when I brush my teeth at night, we have a couple of lights in our bathroom and I will only turn on one of them. So there's not bright light in my face as I'm brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed. These things all make a difference. And when done well, you may not need to supplement anything for your sleeping or at least not consistently.

Another natural thing you can do to boost your melatonin is get out in the sun during the day. mean, definitely first thing in the morning, as soon as that sun comes up, and as I record this right now, the sun is literally starting to come up right now. Get out in the sun, get out, get some natural sunlight on your face. No sunglasses, no sunscreen, just get a little bit of time out in the sun and it will.

trigger, it will help stimulate and regulate your circadian rhythms. It's going to help you regulate the natural sleep-wake cycle. It's going to help your body ramp up, and it's also going to help your body chill out and get ready for bed in the evening. So get out and get some sun exposure.

I'll also give a quick mention to two other supplements that have research backing them for improving your sleep, without the risks of same risk as melatonin. One of them is magnesium and one is called L-thianine. And these two which maybe I'll talk about these in a different episode, but these also help sleep and may have some fewer risks or side effects of melatonin.

Also give a shout out that magnesium is also in my website store. So that's something I also believe in using. So I mean, when I consider that, I'll do another episode on that next time. But let's get to the one thing you can do. So if you're listening this far, Juan, thank you. I'm grateful that you will listen to me ramble on about things, but melatonin. The key with this is melatonin can help you sleep, can help you fall asleep if you're struggling falling asleep.

It can help with very specific situations and it will help support this pillar of HealthSpan sleep. But the one thing you can do today would be please tidy up your sleep hygiene practices. Tidy up the things that you know that I covered here. I've covered this in other episodes that you know will help you chill out a little bit before actually expecting that your body's going to be ready for sleep.

Then and only then, if you tidy up your sleep hygiene, if you've done all the things that I just went over and you feel like I just still can't get to sleep, I can't wind down enough, then maybe reach for the melatonin. Then maybe give it a shot, see if it works, just take a reasonable dose of it. Don't overdose on something, especially if you don't know how your body's gonna respond to it. And even if you do need some melatonin on occasion, I think that it's...

going to serve you far better if you've already controlled the things that you know you can control, the effects of the melatonin is probably going to be even better yet. So that is the one thing, tidy up your sleep hygiene and then and only then reach for melatonin.

So the punchline is this melatonin can be effective. It's a great short-term solution for sleep challenges. It is not effective for chronic sleep issues. you have certainly, if you have a chronic sleep condition, talk to a professional and if they suggest melatonin or some other stuff, that's their jam. That's their specialty, not mine. So get your individual attention as you need to from a sleep specialist. Focus on holistic sleep. Don't mess around with light. Light is going to be the

Probably the biggest thing that's going to influence how well you sleep. The sun is coming up here as I'm recording this, so I'm going to have to cut this, finish this episode here in the next three or four minutes so I can get outside and kick in my circadian rhythms. What I would ask of you is if you know somebody that is having trouble with their sleep, share this episode with them and...

And as always, I would be really appreciative if you would follow, if you would like and comment, that would be awesome. If you have questions about sleep, I love talking about this. So feel free to drop me a line, either message me directly from the podcast platform or all of my podcasts are on YouTube. If you happen to be watching this on YouTube and just want to see my face chit chat about this stuff, can drop me a comment. I will respond to everybody that comments. So until next time, sleep well.

Use Melatonin as you need to and talk to you soon.