Trips, shifts and late nights

How do I fix my sleep schedule with melatonin?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20268 sources

Take 0.5 mg about 5 hours before your usual bedtime, keep one wake time every day, and get outside soon after you wake. Then move your bedtime and the dose 15 to 30 minutes earlier every 2 to 3 days, as your sleep follows. A 2 to 3 hour move takes a few weeks.

If you can’t fall asleep before 2am, the instinct is to take a pill at the bedtime you want, say 11pm, and wait. That’s the hour when melatonin barely moves your clock at all. The dose that moves you earlier goes in hours before, in the late afternoon or early evening, when it seems far too early to be thinking about sleep.

We’d lean on the wake time more than the pill. A fixed wake time with morning light does most of the work, and 0.5 mg at the right hour speeds it up.

Moving a body clock is like pushing a heavy couch across a room. You shove it a little at a time, and if you let go on the weekend it slides back.

Say you wake at 10:30am on free days

You fall asleep around 2am and want to be asleep by 11:30pm. Your own melatonin probably starts around 11:35pm. To move earlier, take 0.5 mg between 7:35 and 9:35pm, or at 8:35pm if you want one time. Fix your wake time, get outside within an hour of waking, and keep the evening lamps low. At 15 to 30 minutes earlier every 2 to 3 days, a 2.5 hour move takes about 10 days to a month.

Why the afternoon dose works

In a 2010 Chicago lab study, 34 adults took one pill a day for 3 days in dim light. The biggest moves earlier came when 0.5 mg was taken in the afternoon, 2 to 4 hours before their own melatonin started. The fitted curve peaked at a move of about 1.5 hours earlier, and some people moved as much as 2.9 hours. Taken just after waking, melatonin moved it later.

You can estimate when your own melatonin starts from the time you wake on a day with no alarm. The equation came from 60 young adults sleeping on their own schedule, and it landed within 1.5 hours of the measured time in 22 of 23 people in a separate test group. The calculator below uses it.

What real life looks like

Out in daily life, the move is slower. In a 4-week trial in Australia, 116 people with late body clocks took 0.5 mg or a placebo an hour before the bedtime they wanted, and everyone kept a fixed bedtime. The melatonin group fell asleep 34 minutes earlier than the placebo group, and 52.8 percent improved by a clinician’s rating, against 24 percent on placebo. That trial gave the dose an hour before bed, later than the window above, and it still moved sleep earlier.

Light works the same way

Morning light pulls your body clock earlier and evening light pushes it later. In a 2011 study, ordinary room light before bed made melatonin start later in 99 percent of 116 young adults. Bright mornings and dim evenings are the other half of the plan.

When it’s more than a late habit

If you can’t get to sleep before 2 to 6am and your schedule doesn’t budge after a month of this, it may be delayed sleep-wake phase disorder. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s 2015 guideline supports melatonin taken at a set hour for it, and a sleep doctor can help you plan the timing.

If you’re under 18, pregnant or breastfeeding, or take a prescription medicine every day, skip the dose and start with the light plan and your doctor. Don’t drive after a dose.