It’s hard to give a straight answer to the question, “Can you vape melatonin?” This is largely because melatonin vaporizers are still a very new product, and scientific research has yet to catch up. But in the meantime, we have plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that melatonin vape pens can be very effective at helping you fall asleep. So, the short answer is yes!
In this article, we’ll explain why vaping is actually the fastest way to get melatonin into your bloodstream. For those concerned with safety, we’ll also tell you about how we’ve made our highly-rated melatonin vapes, MELO Air, as safe as possible — and about alternative melatonin products you can use if you’re still on the fence about vaping.
At a glance:
How Melatonin Vapes Compare to Other Melatonin Supplements
Apart from vaporizers, other forms of melatonin (like pills and gummies) need to be broken down by your stomach before they can be absorbed. It can take up to an hour or two for melatonin pills and gummies to be fully absorbed, and some of the melatonin gets wasted in the process. But vaping gets melatonin into your system much more quickly because it bypasses your digestive system.
While there haven’t been any scientific studies directly testing the effects of vaping melatonin just yet, we have plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest vaping melatonin is the fastest-acting melatonin supplement.
As an article from Medicare Europe explains, supplements that come in pill or tablet form have an average of just 39% to 53% bioavailability. When it comes to melatonin specifically, it’s even worse: A clinical trial from the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology says the average bioavailability of melatonin pills is 15%. So the vast majority of the melatonin in the pills gets wasted!
But substances that are inhaled into the lungs have a much faster and more effective route to your bloodstream. So, inhaling melatonin gets it into your bloodstream substantially faster than taking it as a pill. Additionally, because vaping melatonin works so quickly, there are fewer opportunities for it to get wasted before being absorbed.
But if you’re still on the fence about vaping, you do have another option that works almost as quickly and effectively as a melatonin vape. According to the same article from Medicare Europe, liquid supplements have an average bioavailability of 98% and can be absorbed in as little as 1-4 minutes (though it may take longer to feel the effects).
So, when it comes to melatonin, the fastest-acting and most effective options are melatonin vaporizers or liquid melatonin.
How Melatonin Works
Now that we’ve seen how effective melatonin vapes are compared to other forms of melatonin, let’s dive a little deeper into how they work. There aren’t yet studies that test vapes, but there’s still quite a bit of scientific evidence you can use to figure out if trying melatonin vapes is a good idea. That’s what we’ll cover below.
We’ll start by discussing melatonin’s natural role in your brain chemistry, how melatonin supplements in general work, and what that means for melatonin vapes.
How the Hormone Melatonin Works
Melatonin is a hormone produced by your brain’s pineal gland. Alongside serotonin, it helps to regulate your circadian rhythm, i.e. your body’s internal clock. When the brain perceives sunlight, melatonin production is suppressed, and serotonin takes over. But when the brain perceives darkness, melatonin gets released to help your body prepare for sleep.
For this reason, melatonin production is very sensitive to light exposure, particularly blue light. As a systematic review from Chronobiology International explains, exposure to any type of light in the evening can interfere with melatonin secretion, but light with the shortest wavelength – i.e. blue light – has the most extreme effect.
This might not seem like that big of a deal, until you realize all your electronic devices emit blue light. Thankfully, many devices have a “night setting” that eliminates blue light. You can also use blue light blocking glasses, but the most effective way to keep blue light from interfering with your melatonin production is to avoid screens entirely in the last hour or two before bed.
Melatonin is also very sensitive to your habits. Going to bed at roughly the same time each night helps your body know when to release melatonin. By contrast, going to bed at very different times each night can confuse your circadian rhythm, making the release of melatonin more staggered and less effective.
Additionally, substantial evidence suggests adults produce less melatonin over time as they age. A systematic review from the Journal of Psychosomatic Research claims the peak concentration of melatonin production at night generally declines with age. This is one potential reason why older adults sometimes develop sleeping problems.
So, in short, melatonin production is sensitive to a variety of factors. As such, you may find it helpful sometimes to take melatonin supplements, which we’ll cover next.
How Melatonin Supplements Work
As we’ve just seen, a lot of things can interfere with your body’s natural melatonin production. For instance, traveling to a new time zone is notoriously bad for your circadian rhythm. Even the biannual one-hour time changes in the fall and spring for Daylight Savings can have devastating consequences on your sleep schedule.
This is where melatonin supplements come in. They work by getting extra melatonin into your bloodstream, which then acts like natural melatonin. Once it’s in your bloodstream, your body doesn’t really know the difference between the melatonin it produces and the melatonin you took supplementally.
As a sleep aid, supplemental melatonin can be an effective treatment for a variety of sleep issues. A meta-analysis from PLOS One says supplemental melatonin “decreases sleep onset latency, increases total sleep time, and improves overall sleep quality.” In other words, melatonin can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer throughout the night.
And it’s especially effective when used to treat jet lag (or any other circadian rhythm disorder). A review from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews suggests melatonin is “remarkably effective” when used to prevent or reduce the effects of jet lag. It’s generally a good idea to have some on-hand when you travel.
Despite all the evidence in favor of using melatonin as a sleep aid, it’s important to note that it won’t really cause marked drowsiness the way stronger medications like sleeping drugs often do. Additionally, not all melatonin supplements are equal, and some work more quickly and effectively than others.
How Melatonin Vapes Work
As we’ve already seen, melatonin vapes are the fastest way to get melatonin into your bloodstream. This is because vaporized particles enter your bloodstream directly from your lungs without having to travel through your digestive system first, unlike pills or gummies.
Moreover, because melatonin is a hormone that occurs naturally in your body, it is already familiar to your bloodstream, making it safer to inhale than addictive drugs like nicotine. That said, additional ingredients need to be added to the vape juice to make it inhalable. As such, it’s important to make sure your melatonin vaporizer doesn’t have any dangerous additives.
We’ll tell you all about how we’ve made our melatonin vapes as safe as possible in the next section.
Try MELO Air Products for All Your Melatonin Needs
To summarize, you can indeed vape melatonin, and it seems to work very well for many customers. This is because inhaling melatonin bypasses your digestive system and gets it into your bloodstream as quickly as possible. In this way, melatonin vapes may be considerably more effective than melatonin pills.
At MELO Labs, we were unhappy with the melatonin supplements on the market, so we created our own. Our melatonin vaporizers, MELO Air, have just three ingredients: melatonin, organic vegetable glycerin, and natural flavors. That’s it! No vitamin E acetate, no propylene glycol, and no nicotine or THC or drugs of any kind. We made these melatonin vapes as safe as possible.
What’s more, MELO Air comes in more flavors than any other melatonin vapes on the market. You have a total of ten different options, everything from fruity to herbal to candy-flavored. With so many to choose from, you’re sure to find one (or more!) that you really like. Overall, our customers are very happy with the way our vaporizers taste, and how well they work.
But if you’d prefer not to vape for any reason, we’ve got you covered with MELO Sip, our powdered melatonin drink. It works almost as fast, and it has some bonus ingredients for relaxation: chamomile extract, valerian root extract, l-theanine, and GABA as well as sleep-promoting vitamins and minerals.
MELO Sip comes in four awesome flavors, but it doesn’t have any added sugar or sugar alcohols. It gets its sweetness from monk fruit extract, an all-natural, low-calorie sweetener. Try one or both of our products to see for yourself how effective (and tasty) they are.
Leave a comment