Abstract

Background: Insomnia is a very common sleep disorder which is encountered to a greater extent in cohorts of the population as they get older. The author of this paper has suffered from the effects of insomnia. He has performed some experimentation on himself with a number of publicly available supplements including Melatonin with a view to ameliorating the insomnia with some success. He will be writing papers which report his conclusions. This is the first. Methods: Over a period of 3 years the author has tried a range of different strategies for reducing the effects of insomnia with supplements including Melatonin and measured the effects on his sleep using a sleep monitor and otherwise. Results: It is clear for the test subject that relatively substantial doses of Melatonin (15-110mg) taken during the night can assist with the failure of sleep maintenance and thereby improve the ability of the subject to function intellectually during the day rather than suffer from afternoon fatigue. There may be other people that this approach could benefit. Caution and further research is, however, needed as there may be side effects. An alternative strategy is to clear down the melatonin system and restart it.