The timing of when you take melatonin may also be important. Cleveland Clinic 10 recommends taking just 1 to 3 milligrams to avoid side effects like nightmares. If you’re experiencing nightmares from melatonin, there are ways to minimize this side effect.įirst of all, you might try lowering the dose. The researchers found that taking 5 milligrams of melatonin helped stop these hallucinations almost immediately and taking 5 milligrams of delayed-release melatonin helped reduce the number of times people experienced these hallucinations. The researchers looked at the cases of several people who were having frightening visions and hearing things that disappeared when the lights came on. This same study notes that this particular side effect is rare on melatonin, though doesn’t give an exact number.Ĭonversely, another study 9 points to melatonin’s ability to help people who experience nocturnal visual hallucinations, or night terrors. Therefore, the difference between those who have nightmares from melatonin and those who merely have vivid dreams may have to do with things like trauma, anxiety, and other preexisting conditions or life circumstances.Ī 2019 study 8 found that side effects like nightmares and vivid dreams either resolved spontaneously after a few days with no adjustment in dosage or immediately upon stopping melatonin. You’re more likely to have nightmares if you are dealing with trauma, anxiety, PTSD, obstructive sleep apnea, or insomnia. Why, though, do some people have nightmares versus just more vivid dreams on melatonin? What exactly is the difference?Īccording to Mayo Clinic, a nightmare is “a disturbing dream associated with negative feelings, such as anxiety or fear that awakens you.” A vivid dream, on the other hand, might still be intense or memorable the next day, but won’t likely cause you to wake up in fear, panic, sweat, or with a racing heart.Ī 2019 review 7 theorizes that nightmares are caused by a combination of hyperarousal and the brain’s inability to remove or process fearful thoughts. After all, if melatonin increases the amount of REM sleep you are getting, it makes sense that you would have more vivid dreams. While some people experience nightmares from melatonin, others experience more vivid, memorable, and even lucid dreams. A recent study 6 found that after melatonin broke down in the body, one of the resulting molecules helped improve long-term memory. “Longer periods of memory-erasing sleep” might sound as scary as a nightmare, but before you start thinking that melatonin will go and erase all your memories, it’s actually the opposite. This means taking supplemental melatonin can boost the amount of vasotocin in your brain, leading to longer periods of memory-erasing sleep that leave you with intense dreams. Vasotocin seems to help the brain erase recent memories, specifically while you are dreaming. Vasotocin plays an important role in memory– or rather, forgetting. The study found that when you’re in REM sleep, melatonin releases a substance called vasotocin. For children, who spend a higher percentage of their sleep in REM and are already having vivid dreams – including more nightmares than adults – supplemented melatonin might cause more nightmares.Īnother study 5 helps explain this further. Scientists 4 believe if you are spending more time in the sleep stage when vivid dreams are most likely to occur, due to additional melatonin, it may naturally lead to an increase in vivid or bad dreams. This is the sleep stage where we’ll have vivid or intense dreams and it is pivotal for storing and erasing memories. During this type of sleep, our brain activity increases again, becoming just as active as it is during waking hours. This happens about an hour and a half after falling asleep and at first, lasts about 10 minutes, but each REM stage that follows throughout the night gets longer and longer. The last stage of Non-REM sleep is when you sleep deeply, and it can be hard to wake up from this stage. Non-REM sleep happens first and includes three stages. REM sleep is one of the two phases of sleep we naturally cycle through throughout the night, the other being non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep. This makes sense when you consider children naturally produce more melatonin 2 than adults, and a 2004 clinical trial 3 found that melatonin increases the amount of time spent in REM sleep. As we get older, we spend less and less time in REM sleep. This may be because when we are children, a higher percentage of our sleep 1 is spent in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. There’s no clear-cut answer as to why some people experience nightmares due to melatonin and others don’t, but this particular side effect does seem to be more common in children. Yes, melatonin can cause nightmares in some people but not in everyone.
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