Of Dreams and Melatonin

I woke up around 4 am thinking about a caregiver I met online whose situation is worse than mine. I mentioned this is an important ingredient for staying healthy, being more concerned for others than myself. Still, any health benefits would be negated if I continued to stay awake rather than get proper rest, also very important for brain health.

I sent the person an email to sympathize and offered some advice about melatonin. Melatonin has come up in conversation several times recently. Known mainly for sleep benefits, melatonin actually provides a variety of known “brain services,” minimizing seizures being one of them. I started giving Cindy melatonin after her first seizure and have been slowly increasing the dosage because of yet another hypothesized benefit, reducing dementia symptoms. I shared this info with my acquaintance in the wee hours and went back to sleep.

Thinking that melatonin is making a difference may be wishful thinking, but I do have corroboration. A string of morning visitors have commented recently that Cindy appeared to be more alert to them. No doubt that is why I could not go back to sleep until I sent my caregiver acquaintance my experience with melatonin. No doubt that also explains the dream I had once I got back to sleep.

In the dream Cindy was lying in bed and I was adjusting her pillow, everyday occurrences in reality.  She pointed to her lips with the unmistakable message that she wanted me to kiss them. Now the dream was going beyond the bounds of reality.

Anything near Cindy’s mouth, including an intended kiss, causes her mouth to instinctively open to be fed. Our kisses come when I kiss her forehead, or when she kisses me on the chest as I hold her up to “dance.” The last real kiss on the lips was years ago, as was Cindy using her fingers to signal anything. The only realistic part was her inability to verbalize what she wanted. Still, I continued with the dream without yet being aware this was a fantasy.

I turn my back and in the blink of an eye, or in the scene change of a dream, I notice that Cindy was no longer in bed. I looked around the house, except the house was more like a nursing home ward. I eventually found Cindy wandering around aimlessly. Aimless wandering normally signals an advanced stage of dementia but, considering Cindy has not walked for over two years, this was a sign of hope.

A sign too good to be true, of course. A sign that alerted me to the fact that this was not reality, but a dream. I woke up again, now aware I was destined for a poor night’s sleep, in addition to experiencing the let down when one finds out they were mistaken about good news.

Currently I am giving Cindy 15 mg of melatonin. I plan to cap her dosage at 20 mg. The most serious side effect of high dosage is thwarting the body’s own ability to make melatonin. That is a side effect I gladly risk at this stage.

Do I think my dream will come true? Unfortunately, I do not. My review of the literature leads me to believe that dementia does not result directly from an invasion of amyloid plaques, but rather a metabolic poisoning from free radicals. No organ can withstand continued poisoning, not even an organ meant to neutralize poisons, such as the liver.

I encountered one academic in the literature who swears by the miraculous properties of melatonin for brain health, yet with only anecdotal evidence to offer. I give Cindy melatonin mainly with the hope that she does not continue to have seizures, or at least to reduce their severity. Hope springs eternal though, even if only manifested in dreams.