Sleep Aids for Chronic Joint Pain ??

MyAchingKnees.com received a request to look into the use of sleeping aides, such as Rx prescription sleeping pills, as a treatment for chronic knee pain. Apparently there are some blogs and forums that have people talking about the use of sleeping pills to get to sleep when their chronic knee pain is such that it keeps them awake. Again, this is treating the symptoms not the cause and furthermore the use of Rx Sleeping pills can be addictive and dangerous.

However there is one sleeping aid, Melatonin, that is naturally produced hormone specifically made in the pineal gland of the brain. Melatonin helps control your sleep and wake cycles. Very small amounts of it are found in foods such as meats, grains, fruits, and vegetables. You can also buy it as a supplement, although you should ensure that the supplement is a quality product. Pharmaceutical grade is best as there is a guarantee for the potency, purity (lack of toxins), bio-availability and dissolution.

I have tried a pharmaceutical grade Melatonin product (called Pure Rest), not to alleviate chronic joint pain since I don’t have any knee pain anymore, but to test the Melatonin out so I can either recommend it or not to my customers. Produced in 1 mg tablets which you put under your tongue to dissolve about 20 minutes prior to when you want to nod off to sleep, these Melatonin tablets worked pretty good for me to gradually let me fall into a sleep. I woke refreshed and wide awake the next morning. However, when I tried a larger dose of 2 mg (2 tablets), I woke up pretty groggy, probably as I only sleep about 5.5 hours and the Melatonin level was still fairly high in my body.

More information on Melatonin:

Your body, through an internal clock, controls your natural cycle of sleeping and waking hours. In effect, your body clock controls how much melatonin your body makes. The level of melatonin in the body usually begin to increase in the mid- to late evening, remain high for most of the night, and then drop in the early morning hours when you wake.

Time of the year with the changing available light will affects how much melatonin your body produces. During the shorter daylight hours of the winter months, your body production of melatonin will change somewhat. Melatonin levels slowly drop with age. Some older adults make very small amounts of it or none at all.

There are some organizations that are looking at melatonin as a supplement stop or slow the spread of cancer, make the immune system stronger, reduce chronic headaches, and slow down the aging process. But these areas need more research.

Therefore MyAchingKnees.com subscribes to the belief that Melatonin, granted that is a quality product, is useful to help regulate sleep and may be a partial answer to people have trouble sleeping due to knee pain, but the primary answer has got to be to treat the cause of the chronic joint pain, and often that pain is either in whole or partially due to poor nutrition and lack of optimizers that are know to help achieve healthy joints and reduce oxidative stress and inflammation.


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