Melatonin?

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A couple of weeks ago I met with my son's educational psychologist for an initial meeting. I mentioned that, in addition to being extremely active, my son seems to need very little sleep and she asked if I'd thought about melatonin. I said that I had, but didn't know much about it, and didn't know if my GP would prescribe it.

My son is almost 7 years old, and is rarely in bed, or rather his bedroom, before 10pm, even on school nights. If he goes to bed earlier than that he just keeps getting up and coming through to talk to me, or the gerbils, or the cat. His mind is constantly active and he will come and ask questions, or tell me about things that happened at school, or his latest theory on hurricanes etc.

Even when he goes to bed at 10pm, I know that he isn't sleeping - he'll read or write or play with his toys until he feels sleepy. Very occasionally, he gets upset that he can't get to sleep, but more recently he talks about what he plans to do until he gets sleepy.

Although he's not obviously sleepy the next day, he often looks quite pale with shadows under his eyes, and I do feel that it would be better for him to get more sleep than he does.

Anyway, does anyone here have experience of melatonin for children this age, and what do you think about it?

The best way to get melatonin is to eat a lot of turkey in the evening. The amino acid tryptophan turns into 5-HTP which turns into serotonin which turns into melatonin, (if I remember the sequence correctly. Try to keep caffeine away from him.
He sounds like an interesting kid.

He is an interesting kid! Thanks.

I'll try him with turkey, but as he eats even less than he sleeps, it may not be successful. Worth a shot though, thanks.

Well, his brain is very active then.

It would be intuitive to think that your son prefers to spend much time staying up at night since melatonin is a night-time hormone. When the sun light becomes dereased by the time of dusk, the pineal gland starts to synthesize melatonin using serotonin as a precurser chemical. Either that or its actually tryptophen etc if I remember correctly. But melatanin provides a relaxation during the night.

Melatonin in individuals, I think, has a tendency to reverse its role in certain individuals because the brain adapts itself to the relaxation of night other then the stimulation that the day provides. The effect of this melatonin effect is not permanent but can also be reversed at least temporarily (perhaps a few days or a couple of weeks) if they take melatonin close to the time when they are going to get tired and then awaken a little earlier then usual.

I caution its usage because I only use it once a month on average and felt it to be difficult to get out of bed sometimes because of the effect of the melatonin. A strong dosage is anywhere from 1.5mg to 3mg. I also caution that it could cause some sleep pattern abnormalties that the doctor may misinform that it does not. But its still some rest.

Sometimes, too, and especially if one takes it not close to the time that they will get tired and is up and about, this substance will not work or not work very well. It may have sedative effects or may take a couple hours or more to eventually "work".

I wouldn't use sleep-aids on a daily bases since sleep is a very personal and self-regulating pattern. Some people just have different patterns of sleep.

Melatonin is OTC non-prescription in the USA.
Classified here as "supplement" like vitamins not drugs.

I take 3mg if I don't feel tired when it's time to sleep.

That may be a little too much as sometimes then the alarm clock won't wake me,
but I notice no other effects besides that and falling asleep faster.
(some people have said that it sometimes seems to give peculiar dreams,
a little on the scarey side, and maybe I'd agree that it did the first few times.)
I am in my 30's.

It just so happens that I posted the dream I had the first time I took Melatonin
in a thread, it's the one with the clock.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt80266.html

I just took it for the first time a few minutes ago, considering I'm usually up all night not able to sleep. Hopefully it helps me. =]

It'd be interesting to hear how you get on with it, especially whether you have any weird dreams. I hope it works for you.

I'm a bit wary of the strange dreams aspect as I think that would freak my son out completely.

Tbh, I have always been a night owl myself, and if it were possible/convenient I would probably go to bed around 4am and get up at about 11am. That would be my ideal sleep schedule.

As a child, I would read until very late at night. My mother, another night owl, would come and switch my light off at about 1am when she was on her way to bed. I'd wait a while then put the light back on and carry on reading.

It's 2.20am right now, and I don't feel at all tired.

I have always had this problem, and I still do. Except the time keeps moving ever later. Right now I'm at about 2:30-3:00. The only way for me to reset is to stay up all night, which causes me to fall sleep the next day and not be able to sleep that night . Then the following night I finally get straightened out, but that interferes with any normal schedule, and the change is too small to be worth the trouble.

So I end up settling on about 3, getting hardly any sleep, and supplementing with naps, which I never really get enough of because everybody thinks I'm just lazy and forces me to stay awake.

And it's not that I can't sleep, just that I can't do it when everybody else thinks I should.

my son takes melatonin nightly.....of course, he also takes seroquel- don't know which works best- but he does get to sleep

Well, it did help me fall asleep very fast. But it didn't keep me asleep, I woke up 4 hours later. Stayed awake for 4 hours, then managed to fall asleep again for another 4. (lol, lot's of 4's). I actually feel well rested for once. =]

As for dreams... I had a very frightening dream. It was pretty much a horror movie, I've never had any dreams like that before until now.

My son was as you describe except that we would allow him to sleep in to try compensate for the late night. How effective that was is debatable but it was better than waking him up at the "right time". It did have the problem that he would slowly slip out of sync with the rest of the world and we'd have to cut into it anyway.

Late this summer just before starting Grade 1, because his bus was arriving about 8AM, we started with melatonin. He takes his "vitamin" about 20 minutes before we want him asleep. Either 2mg or 2.5mg, depending on the brand we buy. It's been working quite well. Just make sure you keep the light off [as best you can] because our pituitary glands are suppose to be creating melatonin themselves when our optical nerves don't sense light.

P.S. Based on some discussion over on the General Autism Discussion, I'm going to start supplementing with heavier bedding (eventually with specialty weighted blankets) because deep pressure in general helps calm him and it looks like he might not be getting enough pressure while he sleeps.

My son's at school so he can only really get to sleep in at weekends and during the holidays, and even then he tends to get up pretty early anyway.

I was thinking that I'd try the weighted blanket option first, especially as it seems that melatonin can give you bad dreams. Even if the bad dreams are a side effect only initially, I think that would just be too scary for him.

Just so you know deep pressure creates serotonin, melatonin is a metabolite of serotonin. So it's possible he's going to get a bit of a melatonin boost anyway? But that's just a wild guess, I don't know exactly how that particular process works.

Melatonin can cause your dreams to become more vivid, and if the dream is "bad" that would make it worse. We never saw that with our son. He does dream, he's described them occasionally. But besides a few night terrors when he was younger I think he's only had one "bad" dream that we know of, and that was pre-melatonin. We are giving him 2mg but for kids that age 1mg or even less would normally be enough. For him it didn't though, so maybe the dream vividness wasn't an issue because he's not getting "too much"? Or he doesn't have much in the way of anxiety in his subconscious that would feed a bad dream? *shrug*

Anyway, if the blankets work by themselves that's probably better than the melatonin. After a while the melatonin can stop working and you apparently should NOT try to get it working again by increasing the dose. You have to take a holiday from it for a while and then resume.


P.S. Are his blinds/curtains closed and how well is that blocking out light? Apparently autistic people often have a higher density on their retina. I wonder if that causes more sensitivity to low light, thus it would block or reduce the normal melatonin release? Our son's room is facing away from the street lights and the blinds work fairly well. But being in the city it's still not dead dark like you get out in the countryside. *shrug*

YAY melatonin
My son sounds a bit like your's. He gets 6 mgs of melatonin every evening and now he sleeps... a bloody miracle!
Melatonin is natural, no known side effects. I'd give it a shot if I were you - see whether it helps or not. Sleep is good for kids...
As for eating turkey ect. - melatonin is a drug is natural any way. Aspie kids inner clocks may not be making melatonin at the right time. . . so just giving them the building stones might not work.

I'm on the side of preferring to consult with a doctor before starting anything, even though the dr may not be that familiar with melatonin & side effects

I have bad insomnia and I take melatonin sometimes. I agree with the statement that it tends to be dosed very strongly. Add on to this, since it is not regulated as tightly as prescription pharma, there is somewhat more variance in the dosage in the pill as opposed to the labeling.

Due to this I usually only take 0.7 to 1.5 mg. Usually it only comes in 3mg pills so this means taking one quarter-pill, & if this doesn't help, another quarter pill later. If I were smaller/younger the dose would be even lower.

I haven't noticed dreaming issues, I don't usually remember dreams though, so I dunno.

eeeeeeeek seroquel baddddddddddddddddd i had a bad reaction and had to go to the ER i had tremors all over