Melatonin fruits sources including cherries, tomatoes, pineapples, oranges, kiwifruits, apples, bananas and pistachios, walnuts, and almonds are good sources of melatonin.
Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal
gland in the brain. It helps regulate other hormones and maintains the body's circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is this internal 24-hour clock.
The important role when we fall asleep and when we wake up basically when its dark your body produces more melatonin and when you're exposed to light the production of melatonin drops I'd like to say that with cortisol is like the Sun and melatonin is like the moon cortisol should be high through the day and melatonin should be high through the night.
When you are exposed to bright lights in the evening or too little light during the day you may have abnormal levels of melatonin jet lag shift workers and poor vision can all be a real problem with melatonin cycles the main hormone just before melatonin on the steroid pathway is a serotonin and it takes two different snips to make melatonin if there is a problem with one of those snips or with your serotonin.
Levels you may have a problem with your melatonin is a really important antioxidant and has a number of responsibilities besides just helping you sleep for example melatonin helps control the timing and release of your female reproductive hormones same for men it helps determine when a woman starts to menstruate the frequency and duration of
her cycles and when she stops menstruating or goes into menopause if her circadian rhythm is off she may notice that her menstrual cycle is off.
Also,
preliminary evidence suggests it can really help strengthen the immune system it may also help lower the 8o high levels as tested on the Dutch.
Melatonin may have cardioprotective properties because of its antioxidant and inflammatory effects for example it may help lower blood pressure levels and it might help improve cholesterol profiles melatonin is critical for making secreting and action of insulin now insulin is really important for blood
sugar management the action of melatonin regulates the expression of this particular transporter called a glut for more glucose type 4 and this triggers phosphorylation of the insulin receptor when you have a reduction in melatonin you may get an increase in insulin resistance the more insulin resistance you have the more likely you are to go
on to develop diabetes and of course excess weight gain, especially around the middle melatonin, is really important for making sure this doesn't happen it's
often said that sleep is critical for healthy weight management and this may be a reason why because of its antioxidant status melatonin is also
being researched in the oncology field as it's known that those women with breast cancer often have lower melatonin levels as do men with prostate cancer be aware that melatonin is also made 400
to 500 times more from the enterochromaffin cells in the gut than in the pineal gland when you have
gastrointestinal upset or distress melatonin is made to act as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory right
in your GI tract now common reasons for higher melatonin could be that you just make higher levels of melatonin some people just have really robust levels be aware though that stress can also mildly raise melatonin it's an antioxidant and it's anti-inflammatory supplementation those people taking
melatonin will show high levels of melatonin on the Dutch test is definitely used as a baseline as we can't monitor melatonin supplementation with the results gut
inflammation will raise melatonin again as it is protective those people taking 5-to or Sammy or tryptophan supplements may have higher levels of melatonin because they're raising their sera it's debated but certain SSRIs that are used for depression may raise melatonin levels the birth control pill has been shown to slightly raise melatonin and certain foods are high in melatonin such as cherries walnuts mustard corn rice ginger peanuts barley oats asparagus and tomatoes now what can cause low melatonin or suppress melatonin well, of course, the number one thing is exposure to blue light at night for those people
that are on their phones and their computers and their tablets consider cutting out those things about an hour before bedtime or by those blue blight
blocking glasses that have the orange frames so that you don't get an increase in cortisol and a suppression of melatonin right before bed caffeine will raise melatonin tobacco will raise melatonin if you have mutations and those two genetic snips one of them is known as the AAA a T and the other one
is known as the ASM T those are the snips that move from serotonin to melatonin if you have a problem there then you won't be able to make melatonin genetically again SSRIs specifically Prozac or fluoxetine is shown to suppress melatonin calcium channel blockers for blood pressure such as
verapamil or diltiazem can suppress melatonin beta-blockers like atenolol, metoprolol prattle all and NSAIDs those of you who are taking aspirin or
ibuprofen Aleve Motrin Advil especially and later in the day when you're trying to go to bed you may have decreased levels of melatonin as well when you're looking at the Dutch test.
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