I must often remind people melatonin is both a hormone of light and darkness.
The mainstream narrative loves to focus on the latter, not the former, because it doesn’t go deep enough to investigate the magical properties behind this incredible hormone and antioxidant.
As an antioxidant, it’s more potent than both glutathione and vitamin E.
Melatonin regulates circadian rhythms such as the sleep-wake rhythm, neuroendocrine rhythms and body temperature cycles.
It’s involved in early fetal development, with direct effects on placenta, glial and neuronal development, and could play a key role in the establishment of diurnal rhythms and synchronization of the fetal biological clock.
To say the least, it has an incredible number of benefits for human health.
What I’m about to share here will allow you to practically and (almost) effortlessly take advantage of its healing properties.
Both a hormone of light and darkness
There are two forms of melatonin:
1. Circulatory: It’s found in the blood & produced from the pineal gland which is stimulated from darkness.
2. Sub-cellular: It’s found within the mitochondria which is stimulated by Near Infrared Light (sunlight).
You often hear about the circulatory form which is stimulated by darkness, but almost never hear about the sub-cellular form which is stimulated by specific light wavelengths from sunlight and red light therapy.
Here’s the kicker: Most of the melatonin in your body comes from the sub-cellular form, not the circulatory one. This is by and large why I recommend getting enough sunlight directly onto your skin (most of the body ideally) during the morning and day.
In addition to sun exposure, it’s important to block out artificial blue light after sunset to avoid melatonin suppression through the use of:
candlelight
fireplaces
blue light blockers
incandescent bulbs
It’s a holistic approach to maximizing endogenous melatonin production rather than relying on supplementation which won’t help you outside of a narrow context like using low doses for jet lag.
Caveat: Blue light itself isn’t a bad thing for human health. It improves wakefulness, alertness, and a host of other systems during the day. Most importantly, it depends on context. Blue light during the day is great, but at night? It becomes toxic.
The human body is incredibly complex. We evolved to get ample amounts of sunlight during the day and power down post sunset with little to no blue light.
A quick note on melatonin supplementation
Melatonin supplements are overkill.
They’re unnecessary once you make the correct lifestyle changes.
MIT has known about this since 2001. It’s active at the MICROGRAM range which is why I use the term overkill. Nearly all supplement options today contain upwards of 2 or 3 milligrams.
That’s great news for you because it means you can stop wasting money on these products and implement free lifestyle changes for better results with sleep, mood, wakefulness, so forth.
If you have any questions on this topic, hit me in the comment section.
Much love,
Zaid
Thank you for this. What do you know about high dose (100 mg) melatonin as an anti-cancer strategy?