Why is melatonin known for causing “vivid dreams” when taken as a sleep aid?
In: Biology
SecondButton is right- it’s also worth remembering that melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone you make yourself. That’s one reason it tends to work so well for so many people, *and* why it stops working after you take it consistently for a while. Your body just gets used to the increase and that becomes the new “normal”.
Sleep is so freaking complicated. It’s very individual for each person. I personally don’t get the wild dreams from it until I stop taking it and my body has to get used to making all the melatonin in house again.
Melatonin has very little research associated with it. Most of what is “known” about melatonin is anecdotal. That’s the up-front warning. Otherwise, the limited research suggests that melatonin help regulate your sleep cycles so it can lengthen the phases of sleep where dreams happen. The longer the dram phase, the more bizarre the dreams get. There is also a little evidence to suggest that females have more bizarre dreams from melatonin than men.
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