Posted by yxibow on January 2, 2007, at 1:50:11
In reply to Re: Why rozerem instead of melatonin?, posted by laima on January 1, 2007, at 18:40:09
>
> The rozerem company lists the following statement on their website:
>
> "Little evidence exists for melatonin’s efficacy in the treatment of insomnia.[8]"
>
> I find that pretty hard to back-up. Melatonin's worked out pretty well for me, and unlike rozerem, doesn't leave me with a day-long sluggy-hangover either. I can't help but conclude rozerem is much about patentability.
I agree there is marketing in it but I would say there is more than marketing. Let's use St. John's Wort as an example. Okay, some say its an MAOI too. But anyhow. Let's imagine it had all the stuff Prozac had in it, plus undocumented alkaloids and other herby things. So, someone takes the targeted parts of it and makes Prozac. That's how I view Rozerem -- its an agent that is targeted at MT1 and MT2 without the unknowns of melatonin itself. Whether its 17x more powerful or not could be argued but I'm sure it is vastly more than 5mg. And, danger will robinson, do not go and take 85mg of melatonin because you will get all the "herby things" of melatonin that are unknown, not tested on screaming baby mice and poor beagles and eventually paid healthy college students and then small universities and corporations in eastern Europe and finally trials in western countries.Okay, I just layed out Phase 0-III in a silly and fairly cynical way of how drugs are typically tested.
At any rate, my point is as before -- if 1 or 3 or 5mg of OTC melatonin does it for you, you don't need Rozerem then, because the light targeting is more than enough for yourself, just as if you took Valerian (which has herby other alkaloids in it and contrastingly while its mildly soporific it makes me nauseated the following day typically -- that's what I mean by the extra junk, that one takes along with the "good stuff" in herbs like Kava, etc.)
As for point [8] -- insomnia is a real hardcore ingrained state of lack of sleep, caused by medication, or by birth, in my case, probably both, or even possibly slight sleep apnea. Its not a mild lack of sleep. Its being unable to sleep a complete good 9 hours with Seroquel, Ambien, and Rozerem, and other agents in you and wake up with the lovely Lunesta tinkerbell just floating out the window.
Anyhow, that's my take. As for the comment on long term use of hormonal products -- well, what is the long term life robbing cost of severe lack of sleep compounded with a nasty anxiety disorder. I don't know -- everything is a tradeoff, all my medications have tradeoffs, and the increase or decrease does as well. The longterm cost of suicide is patently obvious and I didn't want to end on that note because this is a holiday season and no, you don't have to make new years resolutions -- just ideas to make what life is for -- for living. Because that's all we have in the end.Joyous New Year
-- Jay
poster:yxibow
thread:717885
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070101/msgs/718446.html