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GETTING
MELATONIN NATURALLY
BY DR
JEFFREY GATES
Melatonin,
as you've probably heard by now, is a substance that is mostly
manufactured in an organ called the pineal (which means "pine cone")
gland. Although revered for centuries in the East as a center of
consciousness, this odd little blob of an organ nestled inside the
brain was once thought to be useless as far as Western medicine was
concerned.
However, over the past couple of decades, hundreds of
experiments have demonstrated that the pineal gland is acutely
sensitive to daylight and our environmental temperature in a way
that dramatically affects our immune system, reproductive organs,
psychological health, and the aging process itself.
Several substances are produced and secreted by the pineal gland.
Among them, a protein called epithalamin has a long list of
beneficial effects on the body ranging from increasing one's
learning capacity to slowing down the aging rate. Serotonin is
widely recognized to have a strong influence on sleep, pain, and
simply "feeling good."
Another pineal product, arginine vasotocin,
is a potent protein capable of rapidly putting you into deep sleep.
There are several other pineal gland products involved in
maintaining health, but the most recently celebrated pineal hormone
is, of course, melatoninthe "fix and rejuvenate" night-time hormone.
Foods High in Melatonin
(picograms/gram)
Oats 1,796
Sweet corn 1,366
Rice 1,006
Ginger 583
Tomatoes 500
Banana 460
Barley 378
In recent years, science has determined that the pineal gland
functions primarily as the "drummer" for the body's symphony of
chemical events. This symphony is composed of two parts. The
night-time chemical melody is restorative and repair-oriented; the
daylight melody supports all the mental and physical work that must
be accomplished.
Interest in melatonin supplementation, however, is due to the fact
that melatonin blood levels take a rather dramatic drop as aging
progresses. The plunge takes us from a night-time high of 120 pg/ml
in the blood of children, to around 60 pg/ml in the twenties and
thirties, and then to 20 pg/ml in the forties. By the sixties and
seventies, the protective effects of melatonin dwindle to
practically nothing.
Youth in a Bottle
Recently, when word spread of the downward spiral of one's natural
melatonin, the temptation to buy youth for $5.95 a bottle became too
irresistible for manyeven if caution was screaming all the way to
the health-food store.
Common sense might tell you that switching a
bowling ball for a tennis ball is not the best way to make the
complex chemical juggling act of the pineal gland any easier. In
assessing the risk, both England and Canada have banned the sale of melatonin in health stores. It is considered a drug and must be
obtained via a physician for a specific medical condition. In this
country, the FDA has not yet attempted to remove melatonin from
health food stores, but such a step may be prove to be necessary.
Fortunately, research has provided us with several insights into
natural alternatives to keep melatonin at optimal levels for our
respective ages. Sleeping with the chickens would be a good start.
Stressing our body with reading or watching TV until late at night
is common to most Americans.
We don't need an expensive scientific
study to tell us that such habits are not particularly healthful,
but several recent studies have been done along these lines of
inquiry and demonstrate that even modest exposure to light at night
can significantly squelch melatonin production.
Couple this with
stress (which also reduces melatonin) and it becomes painfully clear
that we are accelerating aging and debilitating our immune and
nervous systems. As the sun sets, the pineal gland shifts gears and
slowly "spits and sputters" out melatonin in greater and greater
quantities until it hits a peak production around two or three in
the morning.
Thereafter it falls
fairly rapidly until dawn when that other hormone, serotonin, steps
in. The balance of these two hormones appears to play a key role in
preserving optimum health and a cheerful mood.
Melatonin Depletion
What we eat can either promote plasma melatonin and protect the
pineal gland's health or deplete and destroy melatonin production.
A
recent report in the journal Sleep Research (1995) found that
caffeine as found in coffee, black tea, several types of soda drinks
and chocolate cut melatonin production to half the usual amount for
up to 6 hours.
This resulted in insomnia or disturbed sleep for most
of the study subjects. A couple of glasses of wine at 7:00 p.m. may
put you "out" at night but the cost will be an important reduction
in melatonin and its ability to give the quality of sleep that
restores and rejuvenates the body.
Regular daytime use of either of
these drinks will likely jeopardize melatonin's natural anti-oxidant
and immune-system maintenance effects which are vital to cell
protection during the
waking hours.
On the other hand, several different foods are now known to possess
natural melatonin (see table). In fact, some plants possess
remarkably high amounts of melatonin but they are not particularly
great to serve for lunch, such as banana peels or a type of
livestock grazing grass called tall fescue.
Dr. Russell J. Reiter, a
renowned authority on melatonin, found in experiments with rats that
when they were fed a meal rich in natural melatonin, they had
significantly higher levels of the hormone for hours afterward.
In an odd twist of human physiology, research has also demonstrated
that moderate food restriction can increase the number of melatonin
receptors in the body thus preserving the pineal gland from
over-exertion. In other words, if we consider melatonin as the
body's chemical voice, then the pineal gland will no longer have to
strain its vocal chords because fasting causes the body's cells to
turn up their "hearing aids" (e.g., cell receptors).
In a study done in rats deliberately given a tumor-promoting toxin (dimethylbenzathracene),
those rats that were given melatonin and were underfed had a highly
protective effect against tumor production when compared with either
underfeeding (which has a pretty powerful wallop against tumors
itself) or melatonin alone. Interestingly, short-term fasting in
menopausal women was shown to
significantly elevate daytime plasma
melatonin levels to values normally found only at nighttime.
Additional research found that the gastrointestinal tract was
capable of manufacturing melatonin too, thus preserving the pineal
gland's production machinery for the nighttime. To the individual
interested in natural health, all this information suggests that the
quality of fruits and vegetables is likely to be even more powerful
against disease when consumed in moderate quantities.
References
Agnieszka et al. "Food Restriction Enhances Melatonin Effect on the
Pituitary-Gonadal Axis in Female Rats." Journal of Pineal Research
1992:13:1Ö5.
Reiter R.J., Robinson J., Your Body's Natural Wonder Drug:
Melatonin. Bantam Books,1995. $22.95
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