Theserpentrises1666 wrote:...
You shouldn't need to, nor should you, take melatonin frequently. It should be taken just to fix a sleep schedule, but not maintain it. The reason is that supplemented melatonin can fuck with the body's circadian rhythm and hormonal profile. The body also develops a tolerance to it.
The energy from spiritual work could be too stimulating, but unless it feels like you cannot even lay down, I don't think it is the reason preventing you from sleep. It may be, but idk. The reason I say this is because some days I would feel super tingling and awake, but I could still fall asleep relatively easily. This is just my experience, however.
The next, more likely scenario, is that you are stimulating yourself with blue-light before bed, which comes in large doses from digital devices, and in moderate doses from lighting. When you look at your phone, you basically tell your brain that the sun is out and in the middle of the sky, so your body will halt or prevent secretion of melatonin.
The way around this is to install blue-light filters on the phone and computers, and make them aggressive. This is not necessary all the time, rather only anywhere from 2-3 hours before sleep time.
Additionally, you can get some blue-light blocking glasses from Amazon and wear them before bed. They have all sorts of related products. Ones that I use are the Uvex branded ones, and they look funny, but they work really well, and are cheap.
I would recommend a combination of wearing the glasses and filtering blue light from your environment to protect your sleep schedule.
Physically, there are reasons in TCM that can prevent sleep, such as some yin-deficiencies, I think liver yin-deficiency, stomach problems, however these would present with other symptoms, so unless you notice other stuff, than this is likely not the cause.
When you are laying in bed and thinking a lot, this is likely due to having too much cortisol in your blood, because your body thinks it is still day time. During a normal evening, as blue-light decreases, the body detects the change and lowers cortisol and secretes melatonin.
When your eyes are blasted by blue-light, your body will secrete cortisol, which will prevent sleep. As you lay in bed with no more light stimulation, eventually the body will realize it is actually bed-time, and then you will eventually fall asleep.
My advice would be to therefore stop the melatonin and instead make sure your light environment is contained, and this should allow for a more normal sleep.
Additionally, exposure to actual sunlight resets the body's circadian rhythm, so doing this can help you "reset" back to normal quicker.
Also, another small tip: insulin in the bloodstream can hamper the effectiveness of melatonin, so don't eat about 2 hours before bed. This is one of the reasons, in TCM, why they say the evening meal should be small and 2-3 hours before bedtime.
