Melatonin is overdosed in supplements for most ppl

Research and education, not medical advice.

Melatonin is pretty much always ‘overdosed’ wherever it is found as an OTC supplement.

Sadly, due to an MIT patent that assumed it would be regulated like a hormone (and, they, probably wanted to make some cash too),

So, almost all supplements you find have over 1mg, which, for most people, but not all, causes it to not work after about two or three days.

Doses above 1mg don’t improve sleep more than those below, and lead to greater side effects such as morning grogginess. This is because melatonin already saturates its receptors at serum concentrations induced by a .4mg dose (which is still 4x higher than normal peak levels). All a higher dose does is extend the time it takes for melatonin levels to fall back to normal levels, which would cause grogginess in the morning.

The body naturally produces around .125 milligrams of melatonin, so you should ideally aim for a quarter or an eighth of a 1mg, which isn’t hard to split if you have a 1mg tablet. Time release versions might help if those are below maybe half a mg, but justifying the cost may be hard to do and you can’t really split those without destroying the time release effect

The whole point of low immediate release melatonin is to kickstart the body’s own production and get it in the mood to sleep, as well as to mimic normal, Natural amounts in the body.

Really goes to show how manufactures don’t care and may even play on the idea that bigger is better, though, for some people due to absorption or metabolism reasons, 1mg tends to be ‘less’ for them and thus they can buy and take the normal, common amount. Remember that there’s other solutions to sleep too, think white noise, a particular yt video, a hot shower to put your body in cool down mode before bed, passion flower, l theanine, l-glutamine 2hrs before to turn into gaba, etc, etc, many posts on this sub about sleep. gl to you and I hope at least a few people try it out and learn how to get melatonin, the body’s most important and main sleep hormone, to work for them.

Archived into the Nootopics wiki from r/NooTopics — originally posted by u/cheaslesjinned on 2025-03-05. Curated, not authored by the community.