Did you know that scientists still don’t know why we sleep? You could fill a library with all of the books written about sleep, but no one is still very certain what the purpose of normal sleep actually is. How these “scientists” sleep at night not knowing?
Some of my colleagues have been talking about sleep lately–Jessica just posted about sleep training with her son–and I realized that it’s probably because we’re all from Minnesota. You see, much of what regulates our sleep cycles has to do with daylight and our exposure to it. During January, in Minnesota, we get about 9 hours of daylight. That’s not enough to sustain a healthy sleep rhythm, and it explains (in part) the reason why people here tend to suffer from depression more than people who live further south. Simply put: humans weren’t meant to live this far north.
Now, I just got back from Thailand, and the jet lag was particularly bad this time (this is my third time going to Thailand working with my charity: Networking Rural Thailand). So, I decided to take my own advice from my previous post about jet lag and picked up these bad boys at the local Walgreen’s: 10 milligrams of melatonin. Yeah, buddy. I took one the other night, and let me tell you something. This stuff works. The most common dosages range somewhere between two and five milligrams, and I’ve tried those without feeling much of a difference.
These 10s put me down like a horse behind the shed. I haven’t slept that well in a while. And there’s a few bonuses: some preliminary research links melatonin to antioxidant properties, slowed tumor growth, anti-aging, and–most commonly–as a beneficial supplement for those people suffering from depression. I have a hunch the antidepressant qualities have something to do with better sleep function, but the jury is still out on that.
In the meantime, if you’re having trouble sleeping (in any situation), you should consider picking up a bottle of melatonin. Maybe you should start with 5 mg and work your way up, though. Oh, and talk to your physician before you follow my advice. If you have a drinking problem, there’s a good chance that taking melatonin could actually be detrimental to either your recovery as an alcoholic, or to your sleeping patterns (which are probably pretty bad already, if you’re drinking too much).
No comments:
Post a Comment