Why does Andy Galpin say melatonin can make you groggy the next day?

Galpin argues that the problem is usually dose, timing, and product accuracy. He says some pills may contain far more melatonin than the label claims, and if someone takes too much too late, they can wake up with heavy sleep inertia rather than clean recovery.

Does Galpin think melatonin works for sleep?

Yes, but not as a nightly knockout drop. He describes melatonin as useful when you need to shift circadian rhythm, especially for travel or jet lag, while saying it is the wrong tool for middle-of-the-night insomnia.

What does Galpin recommend instead of taking melatonin at 2 a.m.?

He says not to take melatonin at all in that situation because you are already in your nighttime rhythm. If the issue is a racing mind, he suggests that something like chamomile may make more physiological sense than trying to reset a clock that is already set.

can melatonin supplements have 100 times more than the label says

Andy Galpin’s warning about melatonin is not that the little bedtime gummy is mystical wellness contraband. It’s that the pill can contain up to 100x more than the label says, and that some people may be spending the next day in what he calls a “hyperdosed melatonin state.”

That is the useful alarm bell from Andy Galpin on The Diary of a CEO, because it cuts through the sleepy-time-industrial complex’s favorite trick: making hormones feel as harmless as herbal tea. Galpin is not doing the usual wellness-podcast pantomime where every supplement is either a miracle or poison. He says melatonin has more evidence than the tart cherry juice, kiwi, chamomile, magnesium, and fish oil sitting on the table. He also says people are using it like a nightly sedative, which is exactly where the wheels come off.

So melatonin probably has more evidence than the rest of these things combined because it’s a medicine. It’s a drug. There’s a ton of research on it from children to aging to bone health and tons of other stuff, right? It’s a hormone.

Andy Galpin, on the episode 2:33

The dose is the story

Galpin’s preferred melatonin dose is tiny compared with the casual American nightstand standard. He says common doses run 5 milligrams, sometimes 10. His own typical range is closer to 0.3 or 0.5 milligrams, roughly a tenth of what many people grab without thinking. This is where the claim gets less Instagram sleepy-girl mocktail and more, wait, what exactly did I just swallow?

The other issue is we’ve done a lot of morning urine testing. There’s enough studies that look at the dosage that’s actually in the pill versus was on the label and they can be up to 100x higher

Andy Galpin, on the episode 4:05

The verdict: the warning is directionally right and not especially fringe. Supplement-label mismatch has been documented in research, and melatonin is a particularly weird product because the active ingredient is a hormone that many consumers treat like a chamomile-flavored permission slip. Galpin may be compressing several problems into one scary image, bad labeling, high dose, late timing, daily use, but the practical point survives the compression. If you feel like a Victorian ghost until coffee number two, your heroic sleep stack may be the culprit.

His cleanest distinction is between shifting your body clock and forcing sleep. For jet lag, a small, timed dose can make sense. For the 2 a.m. ceiling stare, he says it is the wrong instrument. Melatonin is not a tiny anesthesiologist. It is a circadian nudge.

Where people mistake melatonin is I use it every night to go to sleep and or I wake up in the middle of the night, can’t go back to sleep, I go grab a melatonin.

Andy Galpin, on the episode 3:33

It doesn’t work. No, because the thing that melatonin is supposed to do is realize circadian rhythm. If you’re in the middle of night, you’re already in that rhythm.

Andy Galpin, on the episode 3:45

Your phone is the other pill

Galpin is also good on the thing everyone blames incorrectly: screens. His take is more annoying because it is more plausible. The problem is not simply blue light beaming into your face like a Best Buy tanning bed. The bigger problem is novelty. The next post. The next clip. The next little slot-machine tug from the algorithmic sleeve.

Steven Bartlett adds the grim platform-business gloss, pointing to Meta’s increasingly AI-shaped recommendation systems and the possibility of content tuned precisely to keep someone like Galpin scrolling at 11 p.m. Galpin does not dress this up as a productivity hack. He basically says the environment is rigged and your biology is the mark.

What’s more dangerous about your screen is the arousal associated with the search for novelty.

Andy Galpin, on the episode 11:07

That makes this a less cozy sleep episode than the table full of kiwis suggests. Galpin is pro-evidence, not pro-stuff. Magnesium, chamomile, tart cherry juice, even kiwis get a fair hearing. But the sharper message is that effective things have trade-offs, and the most seductive ones are the ones that feel like nothing. A gummy. A scroll. One more reel. One more dose.

So the concrete takeaway is boring, which is usually how physiology tells you it is serious: if you use melatonin, buy third-party tested products, keep the dose small, take it earlier than your panic brain wants to, and reserve it for clock-shifting jobs like travel. If your nightly routine requires a hormone and an algorithm to knock you unconscious, the routine is not a routine. It’s a hostage situation with a charging cable.