Can't Sleep?  Skip the Melatonin and Grab the Magnesium!!!

As a popular sleep aid, Melatonin came on line about 12 to 15 years ago.  It was marketed as a rejuvenator, as a wonderful sleep aid, as a way to set the clock back on aging.  I mean it seemed to cover a whole host of remedies, but that it was best when taken as a sleep aid.  And the sleep that you would get from it was sold as being miraculous.  It is amazing how a story, a narrative, a theory can have a hold on you as long as you believe in it.  And one way that makes believing a story more effective is if you don't have any other experience to compare it with.  Beside milk and turkey breast, melatonin was the first sleep aid that I had ever taken.  It certainly made me feel groggy.  It wasn't quite like an anesthesia you take before surgery; it didn't put me out like that.  But it certainly made my body feel heavy.  Even in the morning when I woke up, I did not wake up feeling refreshed.  I woke up feeling groggy, even drugged.  And this was after taking a 1mg tablet.  Melatonin comes in 3 and 5 mg doses. I could not imagine taking anything stronger than a 1mg.  But given my experience with Melatonin I will never take it again.  What was that experience?

My limbs were asleep.  That's not waking up feeling refreshed.  

Only to learn that the effects of Melatonin are worse than even I had imagined:

Sylvie McCracken writes that "We do produce melatonin naturally, so I see how it can be misconstrued as a benign supplement to simply pop in your mouth and start counting sheep. Melatonin is associated with sleep because it’s produced as a stress hormone to cope with darkness.

We’re stressed by the dark —> we produce melatonin to try and sleep —> anti stress.

You say you’re feeling sleepy when taking melatonin? Well, it’s merely inducing limpness in your body where blood is restricted to the brain and heart and your general cognitive function is impaired. Um, yikes!  Deliberately slowing down the blood supply to my vital organs isn’t something I really want to be doing all that often.

Although melatonin may help induce sleep in the elderly, Emily states that there is no solid scientific evidence to support melatonin’s effectiveness for treating insomnia in young and middle-aged adults.

In The Sleep Solution, Emily outlines the possible side effects of melatonin consumption:

·         Vasoconstriction of the brain, organs, and heart.

·         Shrinks and involutes the thymus gland

·         Shrinks sex organs Increases heart rate and perpetuates the stress cycle

·         Inhibits fertility

Read more: Why I Choose Magnesium Over Melatonin for Sleep - Hollywood Homestead http://www.hollywoodhomestead.com/magnesium-over-melatonin-to-induce-sleep/#ixzz3Z6yD2Net
Follow us: @hollywoodhomest on Twitter

So magnesium is one answer to taking melatonin.  But it's not like meltatonin is the most effective, natural sleep aid.  It's not.  Magnesium is. So are B Vitamins.  Try a B-Complex at bedtime and watch the next morning how you will absolutely wake more refreshed than your experience with Melatonin.  

THE SALES PITCH
Vitamins and minerals and supplements are always sold in terms of the problems caused by their deficiency in your system.  That's an easy sell. But what people are really looking for are specific benefits from taking this or that food, this or that supplement to remedy what ails us.  And we always have choices, but the sales pitch rarely presents us with the choices and the benefits or hazards of each.  And here I can only report on my experience which as you know is quite specific from any experience that you might enjoy or endure.  But in my experience the B vitamins provide excellent therapy for the nerves and muscles.  So does magnesium.  So, in fact, does dark chocolate.  But I have recently sworn off chocolate because of the caffeine, though mild might be its effects. Another source is Epsom salts.  I have even tried a table salt bath with regular Morton Salt and that has relaxed me beyond measure.  But I cannot reproduce the exact same benefits each time I use any of these minerals.  

The sales pitch for magnesium sounds wonderful:  "This critical mineral is actually responsible for over 300 enzyme reactions and is found in all of your tissues — but mainly in your bones, muscles, and brain. You must have it for your cells to make energy, for many different chemical pumps to work, to stabilize membranes, and to help muscles relax."  I don't know how many times I've heard that 300 number.  And when I do I think that the mineral is of vital importance.  But I must be getting enough of it, for when I take supplements of magnesium I don't exactly feel rejuvenated by the infusion.  Though I don't feel a rejuvenation from magnesium I do feel a relaxation of my muscles, usually the muscles that I use a lot, like I leg muscles, back and neck muscles.  Some might argue, "Well, you might be taking the wrong kind of magnesium or the wrong brand."  I take Advanced Research's Magnesium Orotate, considered by many to be the most absorbable form.  "For magnesium to be effective, you need to take this or that with it."  Then if that's the case, doesn't that, in effect, render all of the arguments about any mineral supplement empty?

Then the sales pitch moves from deficiency to specific medical conditions that are related to deficiency.  We comb through the list to find ourselves, and when we can't find ourselves in the list we realize that maybe we aren't deficient.  To ramp up the deficiency fear, the authors often times wax on the social problems of a deficiency.  It will sometimes read like this, "In our society, magnesium deficiency is a huge problem. By conservative standards of measurement (blood, or serum, magnesium levels), 65 percent of people admitted to the intensive care unit — and about 15 percent of the general population — have magnesium deficiency."

From social problems to problems of modern life . . . as though the stresses of modern life is a real thing.  Last time I checked all of the modernization and technology of modern life have made life easier.  We don't have to go to the store to buy things.  Instead, we can order online and have the product delivered to our front door.  We can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world while driving.  I mean we have voice recognition technology.  All you have to do is speak to your phone and it will find the restaurant you're looking for in Los Angeles or any other town in the world for that matter.  In spite of the ever increasing rise in prices in most commodities like food, housing, and clothing, electronic devices at least are getting ever cheaper.  And we can easily find food and vitamin supplements at discounted houses.  So the "modern life" argument is a bit specious but here it is, "In our society, magnesium deficiency is a huge problem. By conservative standards of measurement (blood, or serum, magnesium levels), 65 percent of people admitted to the intensive care unit — and about 15 percent of the general population — have magnesium deficiency."  Again, the sales pitch calls us to find ourselves in that 15%, rendering your choice to supplement a very private and exclusive decision.  It's not for everybody after all; it's only for those of us who are health conscious or need to be.

Still, for specific conditions, like insomnia, I prefer magnesium or a B-Complex to melatonin.  By far.  I do not like waking up feeling like a zombie.  Sleep should rejuvenate you.  You know this intuitively from a 15 to 20-minute power nap in the afternoon.  You wake re-energized and able to produce for another 8 hours.  That should be your measure of the quality of your sleep.  

Happy dreams.