DOSE:

5 mg

oral

Melatonin

(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 kg

Female, age 57. Dosage, 5 mg at bedtime, per package directions. Weight, 130 kg.

I began taking melatonin for insomnia. The sleeplessness was from pain--I have multiple orthopedic and neuromuscular problems--but as a recovering alcoholic, while I can take gabapentin and Celebrex, I can't take heavy painkillers unless the pain is unbearable, and it seemed to me that some help with actual sleepiness might be a useful thing to try instead.

It worked. I got sleepier, and got more sleep despite pain. I had no next-day somnolence after the first couple of days. I kept it up for several weeks, thinking I'd found a helpful adjunct. Then I started getting sicker. Then even sicker. The pain was horribly worse, and so were the fatigue, cognitive fog and IBS.

My physical problems, y'see, are autoimmune--the immune system is stuck in high gear and attacks the body's own tissues as if they were invaders. And no one had bothered to tell me that melatonin is a strong immune stimulant. I had thrown myself into an extremely severe and lasting flareup by goosing my immune system, hard, every 24 hours for weeks.

Additionally, soon thereafter, I had a coronary. It wasn't caused by melatonin, but the docs say the increased autoimmune response may have helped trigger it by creating inflammation in artery walls.
.
The flare I'd precipitated took eight months to fade, and the cardiac damage is permanent.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 113057
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 57
Published: Apr 15, 2019	Views: 1,996
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Melatonin (94) : Health Problems (27), Alone (16)