The guide

How to increase melatonin naturally

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 202616 sources

Your brain already makes melatonin every night, and light is the switch. If you want to and you can, start there. Get daylight soon after you wake, use lamps instead of overhead lights in the evening, keep the bedroom dark and get up at the same time every day. Food barely moves it, and coffee late in the day and a drink at night push it the wrong way.

Most searches for natural melatonin end at a food list or a bottle of “natural” gummies. The bigger switch, by far, is one you already have. Melatonin is how your brain tells your body it’s night, and it only does that once it’s dark enough.

We’d give the light habits two weeks before buying a bottle, if your reason allows it. If you’re flying on Friday or starting nights on Monday, go straight to the jet lag planner or the night shift planner, since half of each plan is light anyway. And if you’re under 18, this page is the plan.

How your body makes it

Your brain has a clock that watches the light coming in through your eyes. Once it gets dark, the clock lets a small gland deep in the brain, the pineal gland, release melatonin. In 1980, researchers found that a bright enough light switches it off again within the night, even in people, who had seemed immune.

Light also sets the clock itself, and the hour decides which way it moves. Light soon after you wake pulls your clock earlier, so your melatonin starts earlier that evening. Light late in the evening pushes it later.

It’s like a dimmer switch with a timer. The dimmer is how dark your room is tonight. The timer is set by the light you got this morning.

The habits that help, at their real size

Daylight soon after you wake. Get outside within an hour of getting up. Morning light moves your clock earlier, and it’s the main way to pull a late body clock back.

One wake time, weekends too. In a 2005 study of young adults, the time people woke on days with no alarm was the best guide to when their melatonin started. Waking at 7am, yours probably starts around 8:45pm. Waking at 9am, it’s more like 10:20pm. A Saturday lie-in moves it later again.

Dim evenings. In 116 adults aged 18 to 30, ordinary room light in the 8 hours before bed made their melatonin start later in 99 percent of them, and cut its night short by about 90 minutes. Lamps instead of overhead lights after dinner.

A dark bedroom. In the same study, room light during the usual hours of sleep cut melatonin by more than half in 85 percent of the tests. Blackout curtains or an eye mask do the job.

Screens, at their real size. In a 2015 sleep lab study, people who read on a light-emitting e-reader in the hours before bed took longer to fall asleep, made less melatonin and woke up less alert than when they read a printed book. But in a 2016 study, after a day with plenty of bright light, 2 hours of reading on a tablet made no difference to sleep or melatonin. The room you’re sitting in is usually the bigger light, and a bright day helps.

Coffee early. In a 2015 study, the caffeine in a double espresso 3 hours before bed pushed people’s melatonin rhythm about 40 minutes later, close to half of what 3 hours of bright light at bedtime did. caffeine.guide works out when your last cup should be.

Drinks earlier, or fewer. In a 2007 study, vodka finished an hour before bed, about two to three US drinks for a 150 lb man, cut young adults’ own melatonin by 15 percent a couple of hours later, and 19 percent after three. alcohol.guide has what drinks do to the rest of the night.

Does it drop with age?

Some of it does, and most of the drop comes early. In a 1988 study of 367 people from 3 days to 90 years old, nighttime melatonin peaked at ages 1 to 3, was much lower by the late teens, and drifted lower again into old age.

The later drop isn’t the same in everyone. In 1999, researchers measured 34 healthy older adults, aged 65 to 81 and on no medicines, and found the same melatonin levels as in young men. The habits above work at any age. How much melatonin should older adults take? covers the rest.

Food, at its honest size

Plenty of foods hold some melatonin. A 2017 review found the most among animal foods in eggs and fish, and the most among plants in nuts, with some in mushrooms, cereals and sprouted seeds. Blood melatonin can rise after eating them.

The amounts are tiny. A cup of tart cherries, one of the best-studied foods, holds about 0.002 mg. To match a normal night’s peak you’d have to eat about 49 pounds of them.

The trials are mixed. In 2012, 20 adults who drank tart cherry concentrate for a week had more melatonin in their urine and slept a bit better on wrist monitors. In 2024, 34 adults who took 500 mg tart cherry capsules for two weeks saw no change in any sleep measure. A 2025 review of 7 studies found sleep improved in 3 of them and called the evidence limited. Eating cherries is fine, and are tart cherries a natural dose of melatonin? has the full story, but the light habits do more.

A natural evening, in five steps

1. Get outside within an hour of waking.
2. Keep the same wake time every day, weekends too.
3. Have your last coffee early in the day.
4. Switch to lamps after dinner, and keep drinks early and few.
5. Sleep in a dark room.

Give it two weeks. If you still want melatonin after that, the melatonin window gives you the hour and the smallest dose, and how to take melatonin has the reasons.