Rather, lack of. Melatonin is over-the-counter, generic, badly understood by the people taking it and dosed according to personal preference which means marketing it is all abouy big numbers. Bigger number on package = more sales.
The help aiding sleep is only one function for melatonin. The reason for higher suggested doses is due to its anti-oxident function. From personal experience melatonin needs to be paired with vitamin e to really clear out over night. I take vitamin e as I get into bed right before I take a melatonin sublingual. Another benefit of melatonin is that it upregulates our insulin receptors.
Even funnier is that often 0.25mg or 0.5mg is closer to the correct dose, and those sizes tend to be hard to find.
There actually is a condition that calls for extremely high (100mg+ doses), but it is a very rare thing, no one should ever consider that much without instruction from a doctor. But you'll find it right next to the normal <=5mg doses without any explanation.
The Natrol liquid isn't usually too hard to track down. They advertise it as 1 mg or 2.5 mg, but it's the same stuff, the bottle just direct you to take 4 or 10 mL respectively.
I believed that for years, I did CBT, changing beliefs, "just do it" et cetera and I was helpless still, went from one addiction to another. Turns out I had ADHD. My life was totally changed after medication.
You don't have infinite willpower. If humans had infinite willpower humanity would have worked itself to death long ago. There is a natural balance of willpower in your brain, it's called the dopaminergic system. If you have ADHD, you have much, much less willpower than a normal person because you literally lack the dopamine hormone in your prefrontal cortex. No amount of belief will magically create dopamine in your brain out of thin air.
Congratulations! You have apparently won in life by successfully developing internal regulation during childhood and also won the genetic lottery by not having a disorder of the dopaminergic system like ADHD. Now please leave be the significant fraction of the population who don't have those privileges, thank you.
I've missed critical final exams and flights literally scrolling Instagram. Mental health disorders exist, alas.
You don't need to leave behind the conveniences of a smartphone to have a phone that is smart but without the dopamine traps. There are solutions out there like TechLockdown which allow you to make a dumbphone out of your smartphone using MDMs, while still keeping critical things like messenger apps, a predefined list of websites, navigation apps, etc.
Yea, I know, but smart phones are getting bigger and bigger. I'd rather a much nicer camera, and a small dumb phone which texts and calls. As opposed to a smart phone with a much worse camera, that also texts and calls and does maps.
I can just ask people if I need directions. I'm already don't use location services on maps, and usually look things up before I leave anyways.
Just leaving the phone at home is really the nicest thing, and I'll probably continue doing that a fair amount as well.
That talking point - that rapid-form media creates attention deficit problems is honestly overdone and there's no evidence that it's true at all (that I know of). ADHD exists and is a mostly genetic condition, you can't catch it without something serious like cPTSD. Amusing Ourselves To Death emphasized way more the angle of densensitization.
I used to think doomscrolling broke my brain before I was diagnosed. Later I realized I was "doomscrolling" way before I got my first digital device, rereading the same fiction books late into the night.
I can buy the argument that rapid-form media consumption acutely creates symptoms like ADHD (for at most a few hours after exposure) because I see it even in NT people.
I have ADHD myself, so you're not telling me anything I didn't know. Rapid-fire media consumption cannot create the genetic condition, but as you said it can create the symptoms. And that's the important part anyway: a generation that has trouble paying attention to important things because they're getting habituated to rapid-fire video formats. Even if the symptoms (chasing the next dopamine hit) are only acute and not chronic, as long as people are addicted (behaviorally, not chemically) to phone screens, those acute symptoms will occur so often that they might as well be chronic for all practical purposes, because more often than not, people will be in that slightly-dazed state caused by coming off the addictive behavior. (I used to have that myself after a multi-hour gaming session, before I realized that I was displaying all the signs of addiction and quit computer games cold turkey. So I know what it feels like.)
Got it, very good point. Hope somebody studies this soon, I can imagine the title: "Creation of ADHD-like symptoms in neurotypical individuals after exposure to superstimuli/digital content".
I agree that there is no 4d chess here but I disagree that Trump actually does or decides anything.
At this point I'm suspicious of any viewpoint that posits Trump as a president/person with an agenda. I'm pretty baffled by the serious policy "experts" analyzing his actions and trying to determine cause and effect.
It's pretty clear to me he's a demented old man reading off the teleprompter. I'm sure he finds all these duties of presidency pretty hard and tiring on his body and mind. I feel that all he really thinks about is golfing, his estate business, increasing his wealth through other means like crypto scams and the like, and always getting more attention which he desperately craves.
The White House administration, intelligence services and the Pentagon collectively decide what to do, be that invading Greenland, Venezuela or the like. Trump has occasional stupid demands as well, like the FIFA Peace Prize which I'm sure the admin staff find very hilarious but comply regardless to make his little boy wishes happen to preserve the status quo.
Even more spicy takes: The only reason the societal divide exists in the US today is Meta. Facebook and Instagram. When people are exposed to entirely separate spheres of content for hours a day every day their opinion changes slowly but surely and there's pretty much no escaping it.
I don't use any social media besides HN (which no doubt also does this covert influencing). I can spot a person's social media app of choice is in 5 minutes. They literally change a person's character and the way they speak.
--> I can spot a person's social media app of choice is in 5 minutes.
I find this sadly hilarious. What are the current tells you see? I'm similar in that I read a lot of HN and don't have other social media accounts. But I couldn't even guess at what a person's preferred social media is.
I can spot it because I used the various social media apps in the past for a time.
X users will start intensely talking about societal/political issues in the first 5 minutes of introduction.
Facebook users will often belong to the conservative political party of any given country and will start talking about one of the numerous conspiracy theories that provide a simplistic and satisfying yet false explanation to the complex reality of the current world.
Instagram users will almost always have the implicit belief that the most important thing in life is to be rich or a celebrity. The platform just implants that into their mind. It takes a bit getting to know the person to see that.
Snapchat users are teens/college/youth who are usually very social.
Reddit users? I can spot them by their looks, the way they talk, or their writing. Obviously not %100 accurate but Reddit is by far the platform with the highest hypersocialization effect.
Tiktok users have a secret language constructed of a large repertoire of memes among them and will constantly reference them when talking. Some of the memes they talk about are 10+ years old. As a young person who have always avoided social media honestly it's hard to communicate with some of my peers because I don't get the memes.
Neat idea. I’m a native Turkish speaker, and when I was first learning English as a kid I remember always being baffled at the extreme chaos and irregularity in English. In the end I learned it mostly by exposure and not from school.
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