Melatonin: Master Hormone

Melatonin: Master Hormone
by Dr. Michael Colgan
The pea-sized, light-responsive pineal gland is buried in the middle of your brain 3 – 4" behind the center of your eyebrows. For most of the 20th century the pineal was believed to be left-over and of little interest, even though it is the first organ to develop in the fetus, being discernable about three weeks after conception. Ancient wizards, free to think beyond the statistical rules that have restricted research for much of the last 100 years, called the pineal the “third eye”, and imbued it with great powers over mood, sexuality and consciousness. Recent science shows that the ancients were pretty close to the truth.

In 1958, Aaron Lerner, a dermatologist at the Yale University, discovered that the pineal secretes a powerful hormone, which he named melatonin.1 It took another 20 years to establish that melatonin is the circadian pacemaker of the human body, without which you would lose the temporal organization of the hormone cascade, with consequent progressive degenerative changes in the brain and other organ systems.2

Though it cost Yale over 10 million dollars for Lerner to first isolate and then synthesize a few milligrams of melatonin, the ingredients for this hormone are so simple, it now costs only pennies to make. Because of its near zero toxicity,3 melatonin has become commonplace in public use, both as a sleep aid and to combat jet lag, for which purposes it works reasonably well. Consequently, many folk think of this most powerful hormone merely as a trivial remedy. To redress the balance, I want to document a few of the ways in which melatonin absolutely controls human and animal lives.

In animals that are seasonal breeders, including birds, melatonin controls their annual cycle, from the sprouting of antlers in deer, to animal and bird migrations, to sexuality and reproduction, to seasonal changes in fur and plumage, even birdsong. In the low light of winter, melatonin rises to lower testosterone, and shrivel the gonads of male animals, and eliminate the menstrual cycle, and dry the mucous membranes of females. It also changes body odor and other sexual cues, thereby reducing sexual behavior to near zero.4

Because we disrupt our circadian rhythms (and those of our domestic animals) with artificial light, modern humans (and their pets) can breed anytime, and scientists used to believe that human reproduction was no longer under melatonin’s influence. No way! Inuit women, who live in the traditional way, stop menstruating when the dark winter months of the North greatly raise their melatonin. The return of daylight in spring lowers melatonin, allowing the menstrual cycle to re-start and return them to fertility.4

Even in Western Society, in both males and females, testosterone and estrogen are depressed by the high levels of melatonin released in winter. There is a sound scientific basis for seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is relieved by sitting under lights that mimic bright natural sunlight and thereby lower melatonin. Come spring and sunshine, melatonin drops, and SAD disappears. In all of us testosterone, estrogen, emotional tone, and sexuality all rise promptly with Spring, giving strong scientific support to the old adage, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”5

Low Melatonin Promotes Disease
At age 25 melatonin output is about 50 pg/ml per day. By age 50 it drops to about 20 pg/ml, and to 10 pg/ml by age 70, too low to maintain circadian rhythms. Lack of sufficient melatonin is one big reason why many people over 40 don’t sleep well: hence its popularity as a sleep aid. But insomnia is a minor disturbance compared with the huge degenerative changes taking place in every organ and system in the body, because they have lost their melatonin timing mechanism.6

Benign prostatic hypertrophy, for example is present in most men over 50, and many remedies are used to prevent the night disturbance of the urine cycle. Yes, even your bladder has a cycle driven by melatonin, and low melatonin is now firmly linked to frequent night urination. In a recent study representative of the evidence, men given just 2.0 mg of timed-release melatonin at night, experienced immediate relief of symptoms.7

Low melatonin levels are also linked to low immunity and susceptibility to colds, flus, pains and sprains, bruises and contusions.8 Degenerative diseases too. One of the nastiest diseases now linked to melatonin decline is rheumatoid arthritis, in which your immune system turns on you and attacks healthy flesh. Despite a mass of experimental evidence on animals, stretching back some 20 years, this link is still not considered in conventional treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. I include it here in the hope some folk will pick up on it.

In a nutshell, when rheumatoid arthritis is experimentally induced, the immune system becomes disordered via a melatonin pathway through the autonomic nervous system to the lymph nodes when melatonin is low. The immune system goes out of control. Pre-treatment with physiological doses of melatonin (you don’t need much) prevents this disorder. It is likely that melatonin is the main synchronizer of immune function, essential to keep it within the healthy limits it was designed for.9

Even more serious, the initiation and rate of growth of certain cancers is linked to disrupted circadian rhythms. Medical research now terms this previously unknown cause of cancer chronodisruption. It is now linked to the higher rates for certain cancers in night-shift workers, those who travel across numerous time zones for their work, and others whose age or lifestyle choices result in damage to the pineal gland’s ability to make melatonin.10

Worst of all, low melatonin devastates the brain. It is one of the main endogenous brain antioxidants that protects our brain cells from free radicals.11 More than that, new research shows that melatonin also supports human cognition, and that chronic low levels of melatonin are linked to neurodegenerative disease. We know, for example that chronically low melatonin promotes depression.12 Alzheimer’s patients also have chronically low melatonin.13 So strong is melatonin’s control of the temporal patterning of neural and endocrine structures in the midbrain, it is now considered a major organizer of cognition.14

Melatonin Replacement
I hope this brief sketch is sufficient to convince you of the importance of melatonin. This essential hormone used to be banned in Canada but recently started appearing in the stores, a big health boost for Canadians. Whether government is turning a blind eye, or it is now officially approved is difficult to discover. The Canadian Health Food Association replied to my enquiry that any sale of melatonin would require an application to government for approval, and issue of a drug identification number (DIN). Clearly the bureaucrats have not been looking in the stores lately. Not one of the six Canadian brands I examined was sporting a DIN number.

No one knows the exact doses of melatonin to use. There is likely a wide range of individual differences in need, depending on age, health, genetic tendencies and environmental light levels. The best I can offer is the rules of thumb we have developed at the Colgan Institute over the last 30 years, using melatonin with more than 40,000 people.

1. Men require more melatonin than women.

2. Need increases with age.

3. Because of differences in the pattern of melatonin release at night, some people require timed-release melatonin, others require sublingual rapid-release melatonin, still others require a combination of the two.

4. If you take melatonin you must do it very consistently, every night, right at bedtime. Irregular use or timing interferes with sleep patterns, and very likely with the function of multiple organs and systems.

5. Buy only trusted brands. Some “melatonin” isn’t.

Here is our dosage table. Each person has to experiment within the ranges and types to find what suits. Remember, despite its apparent lack of toxicity, no one knows the long-term effects of melatonin replacement, so if you use melatonin, you do so at your own choice and risk. Happy dreams!

Melatonin Use At The Colgan Institute
Age
Males
Females

30-40
2.0-5.0 mg
0.25-3.0 mg

40-50
2.5-7.5 mg
1.0-4.0 mg

50-60
3.0-9.0 mg
2.0-5.0 mg

60-70
4.0-10.0 mg
2.5-6.0 mg

70+
5.0-12.0 mg
3.0-9.0 mg



References
1. Lerner AB, Case JD. Melatonin. Fed Proc, 1960;19:590-592.

2. Sanus HV. Aging. The loss of temporal organization. Perspect Biol Med, 1969;12:95-102.

3. Reiter RJ. Melatonin. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.

4. Rojansky N, et al. Seasonality in Human Reproduction: An Update. Human Reproduction, 1992;7:735-745.

5. Pierpaoli W, et al, (eds). The Aging Clock. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994.

6. Colgan M. Hormonal Health. Vancouver: Apple Publishing, 1996.

7. Drake MJ, et al. Melatonin pharmacotherapy for nocturia in men with benign prostatic enlargement. J Urol, 2004;17:1207-1208.

8. Maestroni G. The immunoendocrine role of melatonin. J Pineal Res, 1993;14:1-10.

9. Cardinali DP, Esquifino AL. Circadian disorganization in experimental arthritis. Neurosignals, 2003;12:267-282.

10. Erren TC, et al. Light, timing of biological rhythms and chronodisruption in man. Naturwissenschaften, 2003;90:485-494.

11. Reiter RJ, et al. Pharmacological actions of melatonin in oxygen radical pathophysiology. Life Sci, 1997;60:2255-2271.

12. Stanley M, Brown GM. Melatonin levels are reduced in the pineal glands of suicide victims. Psychopharmacology, 1988;24:484-487.

13. Mishima K, et al. Morning bright light therapy for sleep and behavior disorders in elderly patients with Dementia. Acta Psychiatrica Scand, 1994;89:1-7.

14. Dawson KA. Temporal organization of the brain: Neurocognitive mechanisms and clinical applications. Brain Cogn, 2004;54:75-94.