Melatonin — Your Darkness Signal
Not a sleeping pill your brain makes, but a nightly nudge that says, “Hey, let’s shift into sleep mode.”
Melatonin is a hormone released by the pineal gland in response to darkness. When light — especially blue‑wavelength light — hits your eyes, signals travel from the retina to the circadian rhythm centre in the brain (the SCN), and onward to shut melatonin down. When the light fades, that brake lifts and melatonin rises, telling your organs, “Night mode, please.”
Melatonin doesn’t knock you out like anaesthesia. It shifts the timing of your sleep window and helps lower body temperature and alertness so sleep can unfold more easily. That’s why late‑night screens, bright overhead lights, and bedtime “mini suns” are so disruptive: they tell your brain it’s still daytime and flatten the melatonin curve right when you need it most.
Supplements can be useful in specific situations — jet lag, shift work, or short, targeted courses for delayed sleep phase — but the doses on store shelves are often far higher than what the body naturally makes. More isn’t better; more is often groggier mornings and still‑messy habits. For chronic insomnia, behavioural approaches like CBT-I tend to outperform long‑term melatonin use.
The underrated move? Protecting your own melatonin. Dim the lights 1–2 hours before bed, aim screens below eye level with warmer tones, keep the bedroom cave‑like, and let your internal darkness signal do its quiet job.
Why It Matters
Melatonin turns “I’m just bad at sleep” into “my light environment is confusing my clock” — a problem you can tune with design, not just drugs.
Closing Line
Your brain is perfectly capable of making melatonin; it just needs you to stop aiming a tiny sun at your face after 10 p.m.