repoman

I am curious about sleep in both practical and technical ways.

I notice that if I stay up about 1 or 2 hours after my body tells me I should sleep I feel like crap the next morning even if I get up later as well. For example last night I crashed 4 hours before normal and slept for 11 hours instead of 7 and I feel great now.

So does anyone know what are the reasons why timing of sleep can be so important to how restful it is? Is it melatonin or other hormones? Also is it healthy or harmful for a 31 year old to take melatonin in a pill? Or is it better to take later in life?

Can anyone recommend a good semi-technical book about sleep?

thanks,

Robert

Majestyk

You could start web search with "circadian rhythym" and "light therapy for jet lag".

tribalbeeyatch

I haven't seen anything that might suggest any negative consequences to taking melatonin at your age, assuming that you take it at bedtime. As another poster has already pointed out, circadian rhythms are probably the reason behind the importance of sleep timing. Melatonin production in the pineal gland is a function of circadian rhythm and not a cause of it per se. The ultimate arbiter of circadian rhythmicity is glutamatergic innervation to the suprachiasmatic nuclei during the subjective night that results from photic input to the retinas. In other words, if you are awake when you should be asleep, you are very likely altering your subsequent circadian rhythms. The circadian rhythm can be modulated, but its modulation is limited to something like 4 hrs per day, with modulations approaching the maximum likely to produce an ever-increasing consequence in terms of sleep deficit. As for book recommendations, the only one that I've read that is aimed at layreaders is Russ Reiter's "Melatonin". It isn't so much a book about circadian rhythms as it is an ode to melatonin supplementation. In my opinion, that's an idea whose purported benefits have yet to be adequately vindicated in the primary literature (although I do take melatonin on a semi-regular basis -- purely as a sleep aid).