What, so everyone's supposed to sleep every single night now?
You realize that nighttime makes up half of all time?
So what is melatonin?
Melatonin, also known as N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine
(Rolls off the tongue nicely, doesn't it?)
is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in inverse proportion to the amount of
light recieved by the retina.
Melatonin certainly delays,
potentially prevents a variety of age-related conditions.
This is melatonin. N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine.
I remind you that it's not unique to humans.
It's not unique to mammals.
It's in amphibians, birds, reptiles...
...cockroaches. Insects. Spiders.
Unicellular organisms. Bacteria.
Plants.
Every plant that has been studied contains melatonin.
Illustrating again,
The potential importance of this molecule.
There is no species that has been identified
that does not contain melatonin. Plant or animal.
So what does melatonin actually do? Well, melatonin regulates biorhythm.
In plants it defends against oxidative stress.
In animals and humans it regulates your circadian rhythms
and is sold over the counter in most countries as a sleep aid.
Melatonin was first discovered due to the mechanism by which certain reptiles and
amphibians change the color of their skin.
In 1958, a dermatology professor named Aaron Lerner believed that melatonin
could help in treating skin diseases.
It was later discovered that melatonin is directly involved in regulating
the circadian rhythm and that it is an antioxidant.
It also has a protective effect against radiation-induced cellular damage.
Before we talk about melatonin and its potential ability to increase longevity,
let's talk about telomerase, a repairing enzyme that preserves telomeres,
which protect chromosomes.
Chromosomes contain DNA and so telomerase seems like it could make you live longer.
There's really just one problem though, which Biologist and Nobel Prize winner
Elizabeth Blackburn explains quite nicely.
OK.
Seems like a no-brainer.
Now, if my telomeres are connected to how quickly I'm going to feel and get old
if my telomeres can be renewed by my telomerase,
then all I have to do to reverse the signs and symptoms of aging is
figure out where to buy that Costco-sized bottle of grade A organic fair trade
telomerase, right? Great! Problem solved. (Applause)
Not so fast, I'm sorry. Alas, that's not the case. OK.
And why? It's because
human genetics has taught us that when it comes to our telomerase, we humans
live on a knife edge.
OK, simply put, yes, nudging up telomerase does decrease the risks of
some diseases. But, it also increases the risks of certain and rather nasty cancers.
So even if you could buy that Costco-sized bottle of telomerase, and there are many
websites marketing such dubious products, the problem is you could nudge up your
your risks of cancers. And we don't want that.
Yeah, immortality is not going to come that easily.
Nonetheless, looking for ways to increase our longevity and overall health is always
a worthy pursuit.
This is where melatonin gets really interesting.
So, what are the known benefits of melatonin?
Well, the first and most obvious one is that it helps you sleep well.
This one is hardly worth mentioning as it is very well documented with plenty of
studies backing it up.
Here's a fairly recent one that shows the benefits of four weeks of melatonin
treatment on circadian patterns in resistance-trained athletes.
Long story short, their sleep efficiency went up.
Melatonin is the sleep hormone; and with a simple Google Search you can find plenty of
studies that demonstrate its usefulness in a variety of situations.
It almost always improves sleep efficiency.
Melatonin is very neuroprotective. There's an entire book dedicated to this topic
called Melatonin: Therapeutic Value and Neuroprotection.
This book contains a lot of good information on melatonin and its
neuroprotective effects and I highly recommend it.
I'll just quote one thing from this book, which is this:
In a study of 14 patients at various stages of Alzheimer's disease, melatonin
supplementation for 22-35 months improved sleep and significantly reduced
the incidence of "sundowning".
Furthermore, patients experienced no cognitive or behavioral deterioration
during the study period.
Sundowning, by the way, also known as sundown syndrome, are behavioral
changes that occur when the sun goes down in people with
Alzheimer's disease and other similar conditions.
Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy are all improved by melatonin.
The explanation for this is fairly simple: basically, melatonin receptors in the
human brain are affected by pathological conditions like Alzheimer's disease
and Parkinson's disease, so what happens is that cerebrospinal fluid
melatonin levels are significantly reduced. If you supplement with melatonin,
you naturally improve these conditions.
Melatonin has cardio-protective properties due to its free radical scavenger activity.
Some studies show potential when it comes to strengthening the immune system.
In people with Fibromyalgia, melatonin has proven to be beneficial.
A study entitled "Melatonin for the prevention and treatment of jet lag"
concluded that "Melatonin
is remarkably effective in preventing or reducing jet-lag."
For people with autism spectrum disorders, melatonin seems to improve
sleep parameters, daytime behavior and has few side effects.
It has also shown great potential in perimenopausal women.
In this study, women aged 43 to 49 saw an improvement in mood,
but women who had already reached menopause saw no effect.
So if you're a woman between forty and fifty, give melatonin some thought
as it can possibly have a strong positive effect on you.
Finally, melatonin is associated with a statistically significant decrease
in tinnitus intensity and improved sleep quality in patients with chronic tinnitus.
That's a lot of interesting health upgrades that melatonin can give you,
right? But we haven't even scratched the surface.
What about increasing lifespan?
A mice study in University of Granada's Institute of Biotechnology explains that
chronic administration of melatonin on mice helps counteract all age-related processes
There's a book called "Modulating Aging and Longevity"
which has a section called "effect of melatonin on longevity" and this references
many studies on mice. A particularly interesting one is this one, where
treatment with melatonin and zinc significantly shifted to right the
survival curves and increased maximal life span of the mice
by 2 and 3 months, respectively.
There are many such studies but the most interesting one, in my opinion, is
this one: MELATONIN AND AGING: PROSPECTS FOR HUMAN TREATMENT.
So here's the thing. So far, the only method to increase lifespan that we know
ACTUALLY works is caloric restriction.
According to this study, "the only proven remedy against aging is food restriction.
It was determined, that a chronic 40% reduction in caloric intake beginning at
the young age extended the life span of mice, rats, dogs
and monkeys by some 30-50%."
Fasting and intermittent fasting are topics I want to get into in another video,
but let's just say that, for most people, being constantly hungry is not a very
attractive thought.
If you watched my previous video, I talked a bit about how eating a lower
volume of food is associated with longevity, and interestingly, this study
also points out that "Chronic restriction of food intake
preserved the nighttime peak of melatonin secretion."
So, basically,
eating less means you have more melatonin running through you.
Quite the interesting connection we've got here, huh?
Here's another interesting tidbit: "Transplantations of pineal glands
from young mice to old animals increased their life span by 42% and
implanting old pineals into young mice reduced their life span by 29%.
Humans and mice are biologically similar; in fact, we share more than 90 percent of
of our genes with mice. Yeah, mice, rats, dogs and monkeys
are not humans and we can't know for sure if melatonin has
the same effect on us, but odds are, it does.
So, OK, we know that melatonin can possibly increase our longevity. But do you
remember Elizabeth Blackburn's talk that I just showed you?
Mess with your longevity, and you might just increase the risk of cancer.
This is where melatonin is unique: it seems to actually prevent a bunch of cancers.
A cure for cancer?!
No, not a cure for cancer, obviously. But here's what we know.
In Schulz-Aellen's book, Aging and Human Longevity, she explains that
"The postulated mechanisms are that melatonin acts indirectly via the immune
system or that it inhibits directly tumor growth factor production.
These studies emphasize the role of melatonin as an antitumor agent.
Other studies suggest that the decline in the production of melatonin with age
is associated with increased odds of getting cancer.
Melatonin seems to inhibit a variety of tumors, and chemotherapy is
is better tolerated in patients treated with melatonin.
These are all very recent studies and so 100% certainty is not a luxury we have.
But it is interesting that unlike telomerese, melatonin seems to prevent
cancer rather than increase it.
This pineal gland hormone has been overlooked for far too long and it's about
time we start delving into its potential applications beyond a simple sleep aid.
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