Ambros Prechtl 27 Quarry Rd., Apt. 2 Halifax, N.S./ B3N 1X1 January 16, 1996
Melatonin is a natural substance, a hormone, made by the pineal gland, a pea-sized organ lodged in the geographic center of the brain. Until not long ago, very little was known about Melatonin; indeed the very gland that secretes the hormone was thought to be as unimportant for the functioning of the human organism as the appendix. But the fog has begun to lift. A host of recent studies have shown that melatonin is of crucial importance. For one, it regulates the diurnal clock, and in doing so controls a number of important cycles that occur in the course of a twenty-four hour period, one of them sleep. Evidence is mounting that melatonin is the most efficient of anti-oxidation agents and that in this capacity it may afford protection against, perhaps even cure, cancer and slow, if not arrest, the process of aging.
In the US, various studies -- at MIT, at Oregon Health Science University and elsewhere -- have shown that melatonin is as effective a "sleeping pill" as some of the drugs prescribed widely for the purpose but without their undesirable side effects.
At the Health Science Center of the University of Texas, Russ Reiter has found that melatonin offers more protection against free radicals than any other anti-oxidant agent, Vitamin E included. This may open new vistas for the treatment of a number of diseases associated with free radical damage, among them vascular degeneration, arthritis, ulcers, cataracts, Alzheimer's and cancer. Many researchers believe that the processes of aging themselves are largely the result of free radical activity.
One group of researchers reported that psychiatric patients on chlorpromazine have a lower incidence of breast cancer and they ascribed this phenomenon to the fact that the drug raises serum levels of melatonin. It seems that there is wide agreement among researchers that melatonin plays an active anti-cancer role; what they are less sure of is whether the hormone has a direct inhibitory effect on cancer cell growth or helps indirectly by stimulating the immune system.
A Canadian study found that children with neurological problems slept better and that some of them did significantly better in school after melatonin therapy.
In Switzerland, one Georges Maestroni, who has been studying the effects of melatonin on the immune system, has come to the conclusion that the hormone effectively counteracts the effects of stress and aging on the immune system.
In Italy, Paolo Lissoni has found melatonin useful in the treatment of various kinds of cancer, especially if combined with IL-2 (Interleucine 2), another immune system component.
Melatonin is at its highest levels in childhood and declines as we age, which may explain why elderly people often have difficulty sleeping, why in fact people age.
For the lay consumer, the most intriguing part of the melatonin act is, and is likely to be for some time, the role it plays in the sleep cycle. The secretion of it is governed by the amount of sunlight that arrives at the retina. Come evening, messages go to the pineal that the day is done and that it will soon be time to sleep, and the pineal starts releasing melatonin, a little at first, enough to make you feel sleepy, more as the evening progresses. For most people with regular sleep patterns, melatonin secretion peaks between midnight and 2:00 in the morning and it ceases when the new day begins and light hits the retina again. That's why it may be wise not to switch on bright lights for a trip to the bathroom at 3:00 a.m. Doing so you might send the wrong message to the pineal -- that it is time to shut down the secretion of melatonin -- and end up spending the rest of the night unable to go to sleep again.
For Africans, in their native setting, the cycle seems to be quite intact still. When the sun sets, they gather to have supper and soon afterwards they retire to their respective corners to go to sleep. But they are up again with the first ray of the sun. In our setting, many factors interfere with the normal sleep cycle. There is the fact of electric light, which prolongs day far into the night. There is the further fact that many people work shifts -- go to work when they should be sleeping and sleep when they should be awake. And there is the lure of all sorts of night activities that tempt people away from sleep, foremost among them television. Is it any wonder that there are so many insomniacs in the West? I spent seven years in Africa. When the natives found out that I was a naturopath, they came to me with all sorts of ailments but I never heard one of them complain about sleeplessness.
Melatonin helps to put back on track the derailed sleep cycle of someone suffering from jet lag. If they take a small amount of melatonin say half an hour before they want to go to sleep, the melatonin gets them ready for sleep though according to their customary sleep cycle it should be time to get up. A few evenings of melatonin-induced sleep should be enough to reset their internal clock so that their pineal will get them ready for sleep when the new local setting calls for sleep. A shift worker working night shift is much like the man or woman suffering from jet lag: he needs to be awake when the local setting calls for sleep and he is expected to sleep when all the signs are set for wakefulness. He, too, may look to melatonin for first aid.
As for the anti-aging properties of melatonin, I counsel cautious optimism. In all the reports on the Internet I have skimmed, I have not come across any warnings about negative side effects. That's promising. I came across one intriguing experiment where researchers swapped old pineals for new in mice and vice versa. The results were as encouraging as they were amusing. After they had recovered from the operation, the young mice with the old pineals started to act like old mice: they were slow to move, showed little interest in sex, spent much of the day just lying around. The old mice with the young pineals, by contrast, acted -- or at least tried to act -- as though they were young again; they frolicked and gamboled, they were playful and the least provocation had them aroused sexually. Now, till much more water has run down the rivers of research, I would not volunteer for a pineal transplant. But I might consider supplementing my diet with a little of the pineal hormone, perhaps 1 to 3 mg a night. It just might slow some of the processes of aging. But, though it might not do what I would like it to do, I feel reasonably confident that it won't do me any harm.