 [ Symptoms ] how can i stop sneak eating [ Disease ] it is a hormone a synthetically produced hormone most melatonin is not harvested from pineal glands our body produces melatonin and most people do not realize this but we all already have enough melatonin in our systems taking extra melatonin probably is not going to do a whole heck of a lot unless you are melatonin deficient or unless you are taking it right at the right time in the cycle to help produce sleep what is the best time to take melatonin well that is a more complicated question than most people would imagine so for example melatonin is only truly effective when you take it at particular times of the day and that timing has to be exactly opposite of your core body temperature drop and so what ends up happening is you may end up you do not take melatonin like you would a sleeping pill where you take a sleeping pill and then get in the bed and fall asleep melatonin does not really work that way you would probably be taking it 2 – 3 hours ahead of the time you are about ready to go to bed and that should hit your cycle everybody is cycle is different and so it is kind of hard to tell if you have already started to go down in terms of your core body temperature cycle and you take melatonin it will be completely ineffective which is why half of my patients tell me i tried melatonin and it did not work and half my patients said i tried melatonin and it works great