When your body can’t make enough melatonin, a natural hormone that tells your brain it’s time to sleep. Also known as the sleep hormone, it’s the quiet signal that kicks off your nightly rest—until something interrupts it. This interruption is called melatonin suppression, and it’s happening more than you think. It’s not just about staying up late scrolling. It’s about the blue light from your phone, the shift work you can’t avoid, or even the meds you take for anxiety or depression.
Think about it: if your body doesn’t produce melatonin when it should, your circadian rhythm, your internal 24-hour clock that controls sleep, hunger, and body temperature gets thrown off. That’s why you feel tired during the day but wide awake at night. And it’s not just sleep that suffers. Poor melatonin levels link to higher risks for mood disorders, weakened immunity, and even metabolic problems. You might not realize it, but your light exposure, especially artificial light after sunset is the biggest culprit. Even dim bedside lamps can delay melatonin release by 30 minutes or more.
It’s not just light. Some medications—like certain antidepressants, beta-blockers, or even high-dose melatonin supplements—can interfere with how your body makes or uses this hormone. That’s why you’ll find posts here about melatonin and sedatives, how they stack up, and why mixing them can backfire. You’ll also see how aripiprazole and other psychiatric drugs affect sleep quality, sometimes by quietly blocking melatonin production. And while you might think taking more melatonin fixes the problem, it often just masks the real issue: your rhythm is broken.
What you’ll find in these posts isn’t theory. It’s real-world guidance from people who’ve been there: the night shift worker who can’t sleep on days off, the person on blood pressure meds that wreck their sleep, the parent whose kid’s screen time turned bedtime into a battle. These aren’t generic tips. They’re fixes based on how your body actually works—and how modern life fights against it.
