Gwern comes close to suggesting filtering blue light, but I will repeat a previous post. I've tried melatonin, but it is no substitute for for filtering blue light in my experience, and it tends to induce horrific, apocalyptic nightmares (granted, a night dreaming of EAS Emergency Action Notifications is better than no sleep at all).
I used to be an owl for years--decades. A regular 9-5 schedule seemed out of reach. All previous attempts quickly led to backsliding and accusations of moral failure. However, I found that an involuntary physiological response to artificial light in the range 460-484nm was involved.
This May I changed my environment by filtering out blue light after 8PM, turning off white lamps and turing on amber compact fluorescents. I'm asleep ~ 10PM and up usually ~ 5AM. This is now my regular schedule. It would have been inconceivable for me six months ago.
I use the following:
1. Inexpensive Uvex amber goggles from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S0360X-Ultra-spec-SCT-Orange-Anti... Wear them at least an hour or two before bedtime. I also have the considerably more expensive glasses from lowbluelights.com. In my experience, the inexpensive goggles work just as well, although the more expensive glasses filter more blue light.
I'll echo this, I had similar results restricting blue light.
What clued me in was when I went camping for a weekend after not camping for almost a decade. I found myself falling asleep and waking early, feeling better, even after a single night, and it got even better the second. Real darkness after sunset, and tons of bright sunlight in the morning.
Wearing the goggles IS a pain though. Worth it but a pain. F.lux didn't do nearly enough in my experience though it does seem to have an effect.
I also find that sunrise simulator clock is okay for waking up but not strong enough to replace bright light exposure in the morning. I would recommend eating breakfast outside in the sun for awhile, and if you find that helps, get some lights with some heavy duty lux for the winter mornings inside.
Nightmares in response to melatonin suggests low serotonin. Try 5-HTP sometime, which is a partial prodrug for melatonin and in practice works quite similarly to melatonin, except it induces vivid happy dreams and is the proscribed treatment for night terrors in children.
I'm testing an LED light currently, it's color-changing via remote, but not the expensive Philips Hue kind.
I'm using it on Orange for early mornings and Red for when I have to stay up late with work.
I think it's probably similar to what you're doing with your amber compact fluorescent lights. I'm happy with the results.
I'm glad someone else mentioned this. I have delayed sleep phase syndrome, which melatonin helps with, but the horrible, traumatizing nightmares make it unbearable and unusable.
I've reached the same conclusion myself. I always find the lists of "sleep hygiene" suggestions to be incredibly misguided. Proper sleep hygiene is important, but I've come to believe that blue light is the most important "zeitgeber" (an environmental cue that influences the circadian rhythm) and it seems to be very rarely mentioned.
I tried melatonin, among other things, years back, but it wasn't until I became very mindful of light pollution past 9pm that I saw a huge correction in my terrible sleep patterns. Never even heard of that goggle trick, fascinating.
I minimize all of the blue light in my place though I am left wondering if just minimal light is the most important part.
Turn all the lights off, a few nightlights, a computer monitor (flux or better), and a dim tablet seem to do the trick.
...it wasn't until I became very mindful of light
pollution past 9pm that I saw a huge correction in my
terrible sleep patterns.
Yes, my experience exactly.
Never even heard of that goggle trick, fascinating.
If you have a chance, read the Amazon reviews of the Uvex goggles. I've suggested the goggles to friends and acquaintances, and they say that the goggles work. Some gave up because they don't like wearing them. One person wants to do precise color matching in PhotoShop at 2AM.
On another note: although I don't have a Facebook account, I find it more than a little amusing that the goggles black out the blue color scheme of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg's green-red color blindness led him to adopt a color scheme that may have exacerbated insomnia around the planet.
I minimize all of the blue light in my place though I am
left wondering if just minimal light is the most important part.
Perhaps. Since I'm changing the environment not only for myself, but for my significant other, I have had to make some compromises--though she is supportive and likes the warm glow of the amber compact fluorescent lamps. Wearing the amber goggles works for me. Also, I only use amber compact fluorescent lamps at my desk at home.
I have had very vivid dreams on melatonin, but never any nightmares. I'm wondering if you would have had the nightmare anyway, and melatonin just made it stand out more.
> it tends to induce horrific, apocalyptic nightmares
I've used melatonin for years, as have many of my friends and family, and I've never had anyone mention this. I've always had more vivid dreams with melatonin, but I've never had nightmares.
I've attended a few week long meditation retreats where you generally have to adhere to the schedule laid out for you; that includes waking up early (~5:00AM) and going to bed early and also refraining from using anything that could be considered a distraction, namely computers, phones, etc. More often than not, a few days into a retreat I would start experiencing extremely vivid and violent dreams. One of my meditation teachers said that this tends to be a regular occurrence as the mind goes through a form of detox when it's deprived of stimuli. It was interesting to read about the parent's experience with melatonin and then be reminded of these episodes, with possible increased presence of melatonin and deep sleep states being the common factors.
Perhaps it's something to do with particular makes of the drug, but I've also had my worst nightmares while on it, and the words GP used are spot on for me. My mom, aunt and other members of my family had similar experiences and we've mostly stopped taking it. I did partly because it no longer has the surefire effect it once had on me, and partly because I'd often wake up in a crappy/despairing mood because of the apocalyptic nightmares.
On the other hand, I really miss it back when it worked mostly wonderfully. I coupled my intake with an experiment on segmented sleep, where I'd take it some time before 4pm and sleep till around 9pm, often waking up in a so called "writer's mood," and then sleep again (without Melatonin) from roughly 1am till 4am. I tend to be a very unfocused person, but on these intervals between first sleep and second sleep I'd feel in an elevated state of consciousness where my focus was like a laser I could point anywhere. Sublime is a good word, everything feels light and effortless, and the right thoughts just flow when you need them. I'm sure people have felt similarly while on other kinds of drugs, which is interesting to say the least. But I was sober and really productive, and have written my best fiction in this way.
Damn straight it's a drug. It's one your body just happens to produce. It's having a biochemical interaction at concentrations far less than would be required for a chemical reaction (such as neutralizing acid in the stomach with calcium carbonate). Similar to using the pill to modify the reproductive cycle.
What kind of dosage are we talking about though? Like 1 or max. 2mg once every few weeks to get you over the hump of sleeping or 5mg every few days and occasionally a double dose?
Melatonin does not directly induce nightmares, per say, just the vivid or lucid dreams you are familiar with. However, if just one of those incredibly vivid melatonin induced dreams goes awry and descends into nightmare territory, you will remember it for a long, long time.
I've had nightmares while taking melatonin with the same frequency as I've had them the rest of my life. They're more vivid, but I've forgotten them just fine.
I have had problems with chronic insomnia and tried melatonin — horrible nightmares. So bad I would lay awake in the morning a bit, just stunned at how horrible they were. No thanks.
I used to be an owl for years--decades. A regular 9-5 schedule seemed out of reach. All previous attempts quickly led to backsliding and accusations of moral failure. However, I found that an involuntary physiological response to artificial light in the range 460-484nm was involved.
This May I changed my environment by filtering out blue light after 8PM, turning off white lamps and turing on amber compact fluorescents. I'm asleep ~ 10PM and up usually ~ 5AM. This is now my regular schedule. It would have been inconceivable for me six months ago.
I use the following:
1. Inexpensive Uvex amber goggles from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S0360X-Ultra-spec-SCT-Orange-Anti... Wear them at least an hour or two before bedtime. I also have the considerably more expensive glasses from lowbluelights.com. In my experience, the inexpensive goggles work just as well, although the more expensive glasses filter more blue light.
2. I replaced most of the white compact fluorescent lights in my apartment with amber compact fluorescent lights https://www.lowbluelights.com/index.asp
3. And I use a sunrise simulator alarm clock. http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3520-Wake-Up-Colored-Simulat... Sometimes I forget to set the clock--now I don't seem to need it.
Not to mention f.lux (pardon the paralipsis), though again, in my experience, filtering is necessary.
Concerning the scientific basis for the claim that blue light in the range 460-484nm suppresses melatonin production, here is one reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosensitive_ganglion_cell
Moral: Nagging and moralizing was both uninformative and ineffective. Science and engineering was both informative and effective.