Its also probably time we admitted human beings can't fit into lifestyles where they're bombareded with blue light, stress, etc right before bedtime. The Western lifestyle is fairly anti-traditional and old fashioned things like prayer/meditation/whatever before bed and calm family time of putting the children to bed or reading to them has been replaced with ipad usage/internet tomfoolery, or tv watching.
I doubt there will ever be a pill to fix this. If you're serious about fixing insomnia then you need to do the legwork of proper lifestyle change. Personally, the benefits I get from running flux on the desktop as well as daily meditation are incredible. Pharmacological solutions shouldn't be our first instinct.
Flash forward a couple of years, and it started to catch up to me. In retrospect, I guess it was NOT working a lot more often than it WAS, but I was still able to get up at my normal time and slog through another day... until all of a sudden I wasn't.
I started having a really hard time concentrating, remembering things, etc. I went from being proud I had memorized the first 40 digits of pi, to not being able to remember my own damned zip code.
Frankly, I thought it was early onset Alzheimer's, and I started putting my affairs in order. Initial tests were inconclusive, but that's not necessarily surprising: the simple cognitive tests are only useful for spotting advanced decline if you are even remotely non- "neuro-typical". Fancier (and noisier) brain scans showed nothing unusual.
Anyway, long story short: on medical advice I threw away the melatonin, and practically overnight my symptoms evaporated.
This is all highly anecdotal, I know - and you would be foolish not to be skeptical. But I would suggest that if you are using melatonin regularly, and especially if you have been for a long time... You might want to casually start tracking your actual sleeping hours, and verify that you are really getting enough - and not just "compensating."
Although I think your worry about quality excessive, it's not like making pills is rocket science. The supplement companies most likely get the powder in bulk from biochemical factories that also manufacture prescription drugs.
The concern is not excessive, at least in the US. Consider https://consumerist.com/2016/07/27/anyone-can-make-market-a-... :
> While real drugs — prescription or over-the-counter — must demonstrate levels of safety and effectiveness before hitting store shelves, dietary supplements are effectively regulated like food products.
https://consumerist.com/2016/01/20/7-things-you-need-to-know... gives a summary of a Frontline episode on the topic; Frontline does documentaries on public affairs topics.
Or, from 2001, http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/73/6/1101.full - "All plant products were correctly identified by botanical plant species (ie, Panax species or E. senticosus); however, concentrations of marker compounds differed significantly from labeled amounts. There was also significant product-to-product variability: concentrations of ginsenosides varied by 15- and 36-fold in capsules and liquids, respectively, and concentrations of eleutherosides varied by 43- and 200-fold in capsules and liquids, respectively."
Or from the 1990s, http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0003/lmb.html :
> Analysis of 16 commercial DHEA products revealed that only half the products contained the amount of DHEA stated on the product label; content varied from 0 to 150% of the stated content (Parasrampuria et al., 1998).
> Melatonin supplements have failed to meet quality claims or delivery profiles stated on their labels (Hahm et al., 1999).
It lists others as well.
I also read in bed until I'm sleepy (usually within 30 minutes). The common literature on this subject says not to do that so I avoided for a long time. But one day I decided to try and it worked!
Does that require a prescription?
Note higher dosing is NOT better...most OTC melatonin supplements give too much. 0.5 to 1.0 mg should be used 1-3 hours before bedtime.
http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/how-to-use-melatonin-correctly...
Number of hours are all over the map. Hey, if you feel its effects within 30 minutes, then that's what you should use...