The promise of melatonin

Better Nutrition, Nov, 1997 by James F. Scheer

There comes a time for every supplement to enjoy its own day in the spotlight. St. John's Wort. DHEA. Melatonin. And all deserved, certainly.

Melatonin supplements have developed a reputation over the past few years for helping us to sleep better and overcome jet lag quicker. It may also improve our immunity, and possibly, help us live longer. Its reputation matches experimental and clinical reality, in many areas, as shown in scores of studies.

Let's explore the promising findings that have been the basis for all of the excitement.

What is melatonin?

Melatonin -- which has the oh-so-charming chemical moniker: N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine -- is a natural hormone secreted by the pineal gland. It is paradoxical that this pea-sized gland exerts such a great influence on our well-being, health, and longevity.

In addition to its reputed contributions to health, this incredibly versatile hormone puts the biochemical brakes on the chain reaction of free-radical damage, which is implicated in myriad health problems and degenerative diseases.

What does melatonin do? A lot. Primarily, as Ray Sahelian, M.D., explains in his book, Melatonin: Nature's Sleeping Pill, "Melatonin helps to set and control the internal clock that governs the natural rhythms of the body. Each night the pineal gland produces melatonin which helps us fall asleep." This is what it does initially; all other benefits come as a result of the hormone's level of secretion and transport via different pathways.

To sleep, perchance to dream?

This is a benefit for which melatonin is well known. I.V. Zhdanova, and colleagues, studied people who took 0.3-to-1-mg supplement doses of melatonin in the evening, and found that it successfully helped bring on sleep, without suppressing, or delaying deep, rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, leading the authors to suggest that melatonin "may be useful in treating insomnia."

In addition, melatonin is also involved in other body-clock disorders "caused by breakdown of the circadian [body-clock] regulation," seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and jet-lag syndrome (as mentioned), A. Kral pointed out in an article which appeared in a Slovakian medical journal in 1994.

Long before demonstrating that melatonin can promote anti-aging, Walter Pierpaoli, M.D., researcher at the Biancalana-Masera Foundation for the Aged in Ancona, Italy, concentrated on studies aimed at hypotheses that this hormone could help prolong or revive the immune system.

Melatonin and immunity

After all, the immune system's key gland, the thymus, which secretes thymosin, starts shrinking once we reach age 5 and continues shrinking until age 80, when only 5 percent of it remains, as documented by several studies.

Numerous studies reveal that melatonin supplements can restore thymus gland function, even causing it to regrow, and rev up immune function by increasing the production of T-cells, so important to our natural defenses.

Just as the function of other glands and organs slows as we age, so does the function of the pineal gland. Science writer Kathleen McAuliffe claims that several research groups around the world have shown that 65-year-old volunteers circulate only one-quarter the amount of melatonin at night as do 25-year-olds.

A Newsweek article went on to say that the Italian studies demonstrate that a melatonin supplement each night has been shown to boost the function of immune systems slowed down by age, stress, and drugs.

Melatonin, the antioxidant?

Russel J. Reiter, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Texas Health Center, San Antonio, published a groundbreaking review of melatonin's antioxidant effects, which appeared in the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research in 1993.

"It was recently discovered," Reiter wrote "that melatonin [...] is a very potent hydroxyl radical scavenger; free radicals, and the hydroxyl radical in particular, can be extremely damaging to macromolecules in cells."

Based on two decades of experiments with melatonin, Reiter asserts that melatonin might be the most effective antioxidant scavenger of free radicals. In an interview with Science News he said:

"We've tested it in every conceivable [body] system that we can assemble, and melatonin continues to perform as well as or better than any other antioxidant."

Melatonin and DNA

A heavyweight book, compiling 588 pages of scientific papers on aging and cancer -- The Aging Clock: The Pineal Cland, published by the New York Academy of Sciences several years ago -- accents this very point and claims that melatonin could be the most important hormone supplement anyone can take.

This is because it can do what many antioxidants cannot, the report states -- penetrate cells and sub-cellular compartments easily. The mitochondria in sub-cellular compartments supply the power and heat to keep cells alive and well. Mitochondria could be injured or even disabled if melatonin were not around to protect them from free radicals.

The same goes for cellular DNA. Unprotected by the antioxidative support of melatonin, DNA could be changed by free radicals-possibly leading to cell aberrations such as cancer.