Brad Stanfield Still Struggling With Melatonin
YouTube Doctor unable to make a serious video on this topic.
I like Brad, but I’m still bewildered by his strange coverage of melatonin that seems to be entirely surgically attached to Huberman’s backside marketing status. Can someone unravel his latest proclamation?
Melatonin is a chronobiotic agent meaning it can shift our sleep/wake cycle, so it's critical to take melatonin 1-2 hours before trying to fall asleep otherwise it has no effect.
So melatonin can “move sleep but only if you take it 1-2 hours before sleep”.
That statement doesn’t make sense.
Sleep meaning I assumed— when you normally sleep. That’s how the statement read to me at first. After all, that’s how he uses it himself. And he did seem to conflate this time-shifting effect with using it as a weak sleeping pill before.
Ok, one can only imagine what he’s trying to say is,
“Take it 1-2 hours before you want to sleep”.
Period.
If you then add “otherwise it has no effect”, that negates his previous statement that it can shift sleep and how melatonin is used clinically, i.e presumably it would then —at least if taken consistently, move the impetus to sleep to around this new time, not have no effect.
If someone else has a different view on this and what he meant, I’d like to hear it. It’s possible I’ve not caught something. But even with this generous reading, it’s still logical nonsense.
What he’s actually trying to say, but doesn’t want to explicitly is this:
"I use melatonin 1-2 hours before my normal sleep time as a weak sleeping pill"
But he doesn't state that. He keeps trying to dress this important fact up in language that makes it sound more weighty, and keeps making mistakes in doing so.
And even if you ignore the stream of nonsense, he’s incorrect on melatonin “having no effect” if taken at a time when not trying to sleep. It can be used that way too. Sleep aside, “no effect” is also wrong.
Every single statement is wrong.
But why let reality get in the way of yet another Top 10 list of supplements vid?
As I said before you get the impression Brad’s got pulled into trying to impress Huberman rather than trying to understand how this drug is used clinically.
Is melatonin over-the-counter in New Zealand ?— so it’s not something he thinks about, but despite being a GP, it's like Brad has no understanding of the drug’s clinical use at all.
He needs to examine how melatonin is used in countries where it isn’t OTC.
Somebody with sleep problems absorbing Brad’s breathtaking “epic” cringeposts on this topic comes away with nothing but rubbish injected into their minds.
He then goes on say that,
Personally, I think the maximum dose of melatonin that people should consider is 300mcg.
Personally means a non-clinical view, so now he’s kind of talking about melatonin as a goofball biohack supplement, seeking to shape himself to Huberman’s position’s on higher doses and therefore Huberman’s prestige as he perceives it.
“Personally” is important, as it doesn’t represent clinical understanding on melatonin’s use, at least in terms of safety.
Repeating what I said before: as far I’m aware, here, specialists can prescribe up to 6mg of melatonin as a weak sleeping pill. For all I know it may be more in some cases.
I will also mention NHS general practitioners here are extremely reluctant to prescribe melatonin at all outside of a certain age range, due to clinical guidelines they are expected to be observant of.
These guidelines are obviously inadequate, and can be and are, overridden by specialists.
The minimum prescribed dose I’m aware of is 2mg. It doesn’t mean you have to take that. There are also 3mg non-time released pills you can get.
For average people, who don’t have sleep problems per se, for a weak sleeping pill sure perhaps 300mcg is about right, and if I can get away with that dose I prefer to, but that’s not for “safety reasons”.
Check out the other article I wrote on this for the other reasons, and if you want to an argument against melatonin; why you might not want to take this.
I’ve given far better case than Huberman has, against. Sure, it’s my own account, it’s not a study, but you can’t get this information from studies, it has to be from anecdotal accounts:
But it varies. Some nights you seem more sensitive to melatonin and 300mcg is useful, other times 2-4mg is more like it. (Again we are talking about people with sleep problems, not biohacking morons on YouTube.)
I find one particular dose of supplemental melatonin doesn’t have a consistent effect. Sometimes more is more, sometimes less is more.
Also it varies a lot between brands. Generics available in this country currently are crap. They are about as useful as what you can buy online in Europe, i.e they may or may not contain melatonin. Yes I’m not joking. The brand “Mylan” that’s been doing the rounds, well I had one batch with no active in it at all, the other batch in my subjective view has something else in it that’s doesn’t feel like melatonin at all. It’s not usable. It’s that poor, but doctor’s won’t prescribe the good brand stuff for long unless you go privately.
For changing sleep/wake with people with circadian disorders specialists might prescribe 2-6mg anywhere from 6-8 hours before. Although a dose, potentially smaller, can even be taken after waking for some issues. I’ve even used it that way myself occasionally and found it effective, although you’ll feel like crap all day.
Using melatonin as a general time shift drug (taken 6-8+ hours before the time you are currently sleeping) to get back to a more normal sleep pattern works quite well for some people, not everyone (doesn’t really work with me well).
Now I’m going to throw yet another spanner in the works here. Taking melatonin “1-2 hours before trying to sleep” to quote Brad and taking a generous interpretation to his statements, may not translate to shifting the sleep time to that time.
What tends to happen with me, in the very best case scenario is a shift of sleep time of about 1-2 hours earlier from where it was, not 6-8, even if taken 6-8 hours earlier. So there is a case for experimentation, and way earlier may be more useful for some people with some problems.
Again, in every way I can tell, Brad is wrong. But all these YouTube vids have to do is “sound right” and seem to vaguely conform to science at a glance.
Brad then goes on to talk about melatonin as an antioxidant with anti-aging effects.
I'm not an expert on this, and I'm too lazy right now to dig up studies but I do know melatonin is actually found in cells and other organs where it has other functions. So it’s not just pineal/brain/sleep.
I have read that supplemental melatonin has no effect on melatonin elsewhere in the body. If that’s correct, it’s hard to imagine what these anti-aging effects “topping up melatonin” are that Brad mentions at the end.
Although I like Brad, his efforts on this topic have been remarkably poor.
