Melatonin is a natural hormone produced by the pineal gland, located deep within the brain. Its main purpose is to regulate the human body clock and help bring about sleep. Levels of melatonin fluctuate over time; lower melatonin levels are found during the day, while the highest melatonin levels are present in the body during the night.
Melatonin is associated with the sleep cycle in humans. Several double-blind, controlled studies have shown that melatonin reduces the time people need to go to sleep and improves the quality of a person's sleep. It can also reduce the effects of jet lag and help people recover their energy levels.
Melatonin may also work on a variety of other conditions. Some studies have shown that melatonin supplements can reduce the incidence of cluster headaches and tension headaches in people with sleep disorders. Test-tube studies suggest that melatonin can inhibit the production of breast cancer cells and increase survival rates in people with lung cancer and brain cancer. In addition, it may effectively treat fibromyalgia and a pediatric disorder called Angelman's syndrome.
Normally, the body secretes melatonin for several hours per day in healthy people. For people who have a melatonin deficiency or trouble sleeping, most practitioners recommend between 1 and 3 milligrams of a melatonin supplement each night, taken one to two hours before bedtime. People with cancer often take large amounts of melatonin - up to 20 milligrams per night. Melatonin should not be taken during the day, and should only be taken under the supervision of a licensed health care provider.
Melatonin is available in some foods, but only in trace amounts. Synthesized melatonin supplements are available at some health food stores. However, in many countries, melatonin supplements can only be obtained through a doctor's prescription.
Melatonin supplements have been associated with a wide range of side-effects, ranging from drowsiness and disorientation, to decreased sperm counts and sperm quality, to headaches and abdominal cramps. As a result, melatonin should not be taken by the following people: women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, people diagnosed with depression or schizophrenia, people diagnosed with autoimmune diseases (such as lupus), people with neurological disorders, and people with fibromyalgia. Diabetics should take melatonin supplements only under the care and supervision of a licensed health care provider.
Melatonin may also interact with certain medications, particularly chemotherapy drugs and medications used to treat breast cancer. As such, melatonin uptake should be monitored closely by any patients taking these or other medications.
As always, make sure to consult with a licensed health care provider before taking melatonin or any other dietary supplement or herbal remedy.
References
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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