Wake-Up to the Health Benefits Melatonin.

Melatonin is known as the “sleep hormone.”  Sleep is essential for health, and many common disorders are associated with poor sleep.

Could it be because lack of sleep also deprives the body of the other lesser-known benefits of melatonin?

This article lists many other bioactivities of melatonin on human and animal studies.

Bioactivities of Melatonin

Anti-Diabetes

1. Melatonin restores dysfunctional mitochondria in diabetics. The mitochondria are the power source of most cells in the body. A cell with a poorly-working mitochondrion is like your cell phone that is low-batt. It can’t do anything.
2. Melatonin stops the gluconeogenesis in the liver. Gluconeogenesis is the production of sugar from amino acids and fats and is a significant contributor to the rise in blood sugar in diabetics. Metformin is prescribed to stop gluconeogenesis.
3. Melatonin increases the insulin sensitivity of the liver, pancreas, muscle, and white adipose tissue and lessens the need for more insulin.  The lower level of insulin prevents the damaging effects of hyperinsulinemia.
4. Melatonin has protective effects on the diabetic heart
5. Melatonin prevents the premature failure of the cells of the pancreas that makes insulin. When insulin secretion is not enough, the blood sugar shoots up, and diabetes becomes uncontrolled. That is the time for more medicines and possibly insulin shots.
6.  Promotes new brain cell formation (neurogenesis) and better inter-neuron communication.
7. Accelerates bone healing in diabetics
8. Diabetics develop complications in their blood vessels. Melatonin helps diseased blood vessels regain their self-maintenance functions

Anti-Obese Functions

1. Melatonin can turn white fat into brown fat. Brown fat can burn more calories than white fat.
2. Melatonin can regulate the cytokines that promote obesity.
3. Improves fatty liver disease

Cardiovascular Protection

1. Melatonin regulated platelet functions. Overactive platelets can stick to a blood vessel to form a blood clot and lead to a heart attack.
2. Melatonin protected the inner lining of the blood vessels (endothelium). Read about the endothelium in, The Magical Endothelium
3. Melatonin reduced the heart rate, blood pressure, regulate the heart rhythm.
4. Protected the heart cells from radiation-induced injury during cancer treatment.
5. Protected stem cells from injuries in patients with valvular heart disease.
6. Melatonin reduced the infarct size after a heart attack by decreasing reperfusion injury and apoptosis or programmed cell death.
7. Melatonin improved cardiac remodeling after cardioversion. Chemical or electrical cardioversion is used in dangerous cardiac rhythm problems.
8. It improved heart function after a heart attack.
9. Melatonin blunted the kidney damage brought about by hypertension
10. Melatonin decreased the increase in intracranial pressure by reducing brain edema thru anti-inflammatory mechanisms.
11. Melatonin brings back the balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system by reducing the sympathetic and increasing the parasympathetic system. The whole body becomes more relaxed instead of stressed.
12. Melatonin reduces total and LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

Anti-Cancer Activities

1. Melatonin prevented cancer cell growth and proliferation.
2. It modulated the metabolism of cancer cells.  Cancer cell metabolism is usually in hyperdrive, which leads to cancer cell multiplication and metastasis.
3. Melatonin promotes cancer apoptosis. Apoptosis is a naturally occurring cell death in all cells. In cancer, apoptosis becomes delayed or absent.
4. Melatonin prevented angiogenesis or new blood vessels from forming to supply the growth of the cancer cells.
5. Melatonin enhanced the sensitivity to anti-cancer drugs and lessened the side effects of chemo and radiation therapy.
6. Melatonin has shown beneficial effects in the following cancers: Stomach, breast, prostate, colorectal cancer, and testicular cancer.
7. Melatonin cream can alleviate acute radiation dermatitis of radiation therapy.

Brain Protective Activities

1. Melatonin reduced the disease changes after traumatic brain injury.
2. Melatonin prevented ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats who had an experimental stroke and then received reperfusion therapy. In real like stroke, the resumption of blood flow and oxygen supply to a previously infarcted tissue lead to the formation of free-radicals that lead to further brain cell injury.
3. Melatonin increased the number of axons in the sciatic nerve in baby rats that are exposed to diclofenac in-utero.  (see the image of axon below)
4. Melatonin improved optic neuritis.
5. Neuroprotective against Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s Disease.
6. Melatonin prevented neurotoxicity induced by cadmium
7. Melatonin prevented brain damage caused by 900MHz electromagnetic fields (EMF), which are associated with cellular phones.
8. Melatonin is used in mental disorders.

More Melatonin Bioactivities and Uses

Many other organs in the body have receptors and thus respond to melatonin. They are the brain, lung, muscles, bones, renal cells, reproductive cells, mitochondria, and cell nuclei. That is why it has been suggested that melatonin can:

1. Counteract age-related bone loss
2. Improve muscle function in muscle dystrophy
3. Positively affect chronic respiratory diseases like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
4. Protects against chronic kidney disease
5. Helps with fertilization in both men and women
6. Melatonin assists in oral health by stimulating the healthy growth of the gums and teeth improve wound healing and preventing oral cancer.
7. Contributes to healthy aging and normal life span
8. Used in pain syndromes
9. Prescribed in sleep disorders
10. Neonatology and Pediatrics
11. Gastrointestinal conditions

Science Behind all the Beneficial Effects of Melatonin

How can melatonin do all of that? Melatonin acts in different ways at the cellular level.

1. Melatonin can scavenge excess free-radicals. Excess free radicals cause DNA and RNA damage, and protein denaturation. All of that can lead to early cell death. This is what is happening in aging, inflammation, cancer, chronic metabolic disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and severe infections.
2. Melatonin works as an anti-inflammatory
3. Enhances Immune activities
4. Promotes a healthy circadian rhythm

With all the benefits of melatonin, it would be a shame not to take full advantage of a good night’s sleep to get enough melatonin.

But what if we cannot get enough sleep for any reason and you don’t want to take melatonin tablets? Is there melatonin in food and drinks?

That will be the subject of the next article.

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Related Topics:

1. The Best Time to Take Statins
2. Using the Circadian Rhythm for More Effective Blood Pressure Control
3. The Protective Effects of Sleep and Melatonin on the Stomach
4. The Circadian Rhythm: Timing is Everything
5. 30 Ways For a Good Sleep Without Drugs
6. How Does Sleeping Protect the Brain?
7. The Magical Endothelium
8. What is Insulin Resistance?
9. Hyperinsulinemia
10. I’m Only Pre-Diabetic, So I’m Still OK, Right?

References:

1. Dietary Sources and Bioactivities of Melatonin. Xiao Meng, Ya Li, Sha Li, Yue Zhou, Ren-You Gan, Dong-Ping Xu, Hua-Bin Li. Nutrients. 2017 Apr; 9(4): 367. Published online 2017 Apr 7. doi: 10.3390/nu9040367. PMCID: PMC5409706
2. Melatonin and health: an umbrella review of health outcomes and biological mechanisms of action. Pawel P. Posadzki, Ram Bajpai, Bhone Myint Kyaw, Nicola J. Roberts, Amnon Brzezinski, George I. Christopoulos, Ushashree Divakar, Shweta Bajpai, Michael Soljak, Gerard Dunleavy, Krister Jarbrink, Ei Ei Khaing Nang, Chee Kiong Soh, Josip Car. BMC Med. 2018; 16: 18. Published online 2018 Feb 5. doi: 10.1186/s12916-017-1000-8. PMCID: PMC5798185

Image Credits:

1. Morning Casey Horner on Unsplash
2. Heart Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
3. Nerve cell and axon By BruceBlaus – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28761830
4. Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash

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