Hello,

My doctor turned me on to Melotonin about a year ago, I started out on a 3-
millagram dose for a month, then went to a 6 mil dose for a month, now I am
using 9 mil and sleeping just great.  Just wanted to affirm this article.

Scott

[log in to unmask]
Kelly Pierce wrote:
>A new study has discovered a method on how to correct the sleep problems
>of the blind.
>
>kelly
>
>
>
>
>
>The New York Times: June 22, 1999
>Melatonin Used to Restore Sleep Patterns in Blind People
>By ERICA GOODE
>
> In the early 1970's, Dr. James Stevenson, then a graduate student in
>psychology at Stanford University, developed a theory about why he had
>so much trouble sleeping.
>Dr. Stevenson, who had been blind from birth, suffered insomnia at
>night, and in the daytime experienced "sleep attacks," which arrived
>one hour later each day, playing havoc with his efforts to get to
>classes on time.
>He had read that in blinded animals, the body's clock, normally
>harnessed to the 24-hour cycle of daylight and darkness, often goes
>into free run, shifting sleep patterns. His own sleeping difficulties,
>Dr. Stevenson suspected, might have a similar origin.
>A sleep researcher, Dr. Laughton Miles, later confirmed what Dr.
>Stevenson had concluded: In the absence of light, his body had taken
>up a free-running, 24.9-hour circadian rhythm of sleep and
>wakefulness, a schedule that shifted his natural sleeping time back by
>nearly an hour each day.
>But Dr. Miles, who in 1977 published a scientific report on Dr.
>Stevenson's case, could find no way to fix the problem, nor could
>other researchers, who have spent two decades seeking effective
>treatments for the sleep problems caused by free-running circadian
>rhythms, which affect about half the 200,000 Americans who are totally
>blind.
>If a study to be presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the
>Associated Profession Sleep Societies in Orlando, Fla., holds up,
>however, the search may finally be over.
>Dr. Robert L. Sack, Dr. Alfred J. Lewy and Richard W. Brandes of the
>Sleep and Mood Disorders Laboratory at Oregon Health Sciences
>University, are scheduled to present their finding that a daily
>10-milligram dose of the hormone melatonin successfully "entrained"
>the free-running rhythms of 6 out of 7 totally blind subjects,
>returning them to a normal, 24-hour sleep pattern.
>"Even entraining one blind person with melatonin is important," said
>Dr. Charmane Eastman, director of the Biological Rhythms Research
>Laboratory at Rush Presbyterian-St. Lukes Medical Center in Chicago.
>The new study, she said, has implications not only for the blind, who
>often list sleep problems as one of the most difficult aspects of
>their disability, but also for sighted people, whose circadian rhythms
>can be altered by jet lag or shift work.
>Dr. Lewy, director of the sleep lab at Oregon, said, "Totally blind
>people offer a natural way to study the human body clock, without the
>interference of light cues."
>In an earlier study, the researchers tried using a 5-milligram dose of
>melatonin without success. "We got some shifting of rhythms, but we
>weren't able to establish a clear 24-hour cycle," Dr. Sack said.
>A few otherinvestigators have reported single cases in which melatonin
>corrected free-running sleep-wake cycles in blind people. And Dr.
>Stevenson, now a research psychologist at NASA Ames Research Center in
>Mountainview, Calif., said he began taking melatonin before bedtime in
>1987, and now sleeps normally. But the new study compared melatonin
>with placebo pills in a group of subjects.
>Melatonin is secreted by the pineal gland -- a tiny structure deep in
>the brain -- and helps regulate the body's biological clock. In
>sighted people, melatonin secretion is synchronized with the 24-hour
>cycle of daylight and darkness, turning on at nightfall, and
>continuing for about 12 hours. But in the absence of light, most
>people's body clocks run on a cycle slightly longer than 24 hours, Dr.
>Sack said.
>The hormone is also sold over the counter as a nutritional supplement,
>usually in 3-milligram tablets. Taken in the afternoon, it shifts the
>body's clock earlier, tricking it into thinking dusk has already
>fallen. Taken in the morning, however, it delays the clock, as if dawn
>had not yet arrived.
>Scientists still know little about the effects of melatonin at
>different dosages: In sleep studies, researchers have used doses as
>small as .3 milligrams and as large as 75 milligrams or higher. Dr.
>Sack said for some blind people 10 milligrams may be more than is
>needed. He and his colleagues are conducting further research to see
>if dosages between 5 and 10 milligrams are equally effective.
>In the study, the subjects, who did not know which treatment they were
>receiving, took melatonin an hour before bedtime for a period of
>weeks, then were switched to a dummy pill, or vice versa. The length
>of time it took for the melatonin to shift rhythms back to normal
>varied from person to person. "Without knowledge of a person's
>circadian phase," Dr. Sack and his colleagues wrote, "it may be
>difficult to know the best day for initiating melatonin treatment;
>thus entrainment may not occur for weeks or months."
>Clifton Zang, a 47-year-old man from Portland who has been totally
>blind since being hit in the head by a stray bullet while sitting in
>his pickup truck 16 years ago, said the benefits of melatonin became
>apparent not long after he started taking the supplement. "Before the
>study, I had no control of my sleep," Mr. Zang said. "I'd sleep any
>time of the day or night. I'd be awake at 2 in the morning and fall
>asleep at noon. But since I've been on the melatonin I go to sleep at
>11 o'clock and wake up at 5, 6 or 7."
>
>
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