Confused: Melatonin

[The Dude]

Hello, Peatarians

Good morning

I am hoping that someone will chime in to clarify things.




Is green light at night beneficial for night time use?

What I "know" / current understanding / logic as follows:


-Blue light stimulates cortisol, and suppresses melatonin.
-Violet, Blue and Green light DO suppress melatonin.
-Yellow, Orange and Red light DO NOT suppress melatonin.
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I have read conflicting information about melatonin:
A) Most of what I read is that melatonin is important because it promotes sleep.

B) I have also read that melatonin is falsely correlated with sleep, and that it is actually a stress hormone that is released in response to darkness - to quote the blog: " But that is only because melatonin is a stress hormone. It is produced in response to the stress of your body exposed to darkness, without exposure to natural light. Darkness is actually highly stressful to the body, and the body’s response is to sleep, which is anti-stress."

http://butterbeliever.com/the-melatonin-scam/

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Information B seems to be more along the lines of Ray Peat.

-Ray Peat views melatonin as a stress hormone.

1) .....so less melatonin = less stress????

2) Melatonin has no true correlation with sleep???

3) Melatonin's true nature is that it is a stress response to darkness?

--------------------------------------------------------------

If 1,2 and 3 are all true, then it stands to reason that one should proceed as follows:

A) limit exposure to stimulating Violet and Blue wavelengths - to limit cortisol at night.

B) Green light would be the best light because it suppresses melatonin BUT does not induce a rise in cortisol.

C) Light bulbs that emit ONLY yellow/orange/red part of the spectrum are detrimental because they simulate darkness to the retina by blocking all other melatonin-suppressing wavelengths, namely Green.

D) "Blue light blocker" glasses are most beneficial if they DO NOT block the green wavelengths.

Comments?

Thanks

 

[RealNeat]

Hello, Peatarians

Good morning

I am hoping that someone will chime in to clarify things.




Is green light at night beneficial for night time use?

What I "know" / current understanding / logic as follows:


-Blue light stimulates cortisol, and suppresses melatonin.
-Violet, Blue and Green light DO suppress melatonin.
-Yellow, Orange and Red light DO NOT suppress melatonin.
--------------------------------------------------------------
I have read conflicting information about melatonin:
A) Most of what I read is that melatonin is important because it promotes sleep.

B) I have also read that melatonin is falsely correlated with sleep, and that it is actually a stress hormone that is released in response to darkness - to quote the blog: " But that is only because melatonin is a stress hormone. It is produced in response to the stress of your body exposed to darkness, without exposure to natural light. Darkness is actually highly stressful to the body, and the body’s response is to sleep, which is anti-stress."

http://butterbeliever.com/the-melatonin-scam/

--------------------------------------------------------------
Information B seems to be more along the lines of Ray Peat.

-Ray Peat views melatonin as a stress hormone.

1) .....so less melatonin = less stress????

2) Melatonin has no true correlation with sleep???

3) Melatonin's true nature is that it is a stress response to darkness?

--------------------------------------------------------------

If 1,2 and 3 are all true, then it stands to reason that one should proceed as follows:

A) limit exposure to stimulating Violet and Blue wavelengths - to limit cortisol at night.

B) Green light would be the best light because it suppresses melatonin BUT does not induce a rise in cortisol.

C) Light bulbs that emit ONLY yellow/orange/red part of the spectrum are detrimental because they simulate darkness to the retina by blocking all other melatonin-suppressing wavelengths, namely Green.

D) "Blue light blocker" glasses are most beneficial if they DO NOT block the green wavelengths.

Comments?

Thanks

I've pondered this myself. My conclusion is to adhere to the natural cycles as much as possible. Everything else is sub optimal. But an interesting point, fire is mainly in the red, orange, yellow spectrum hence limiting our ability to "see" it however it emits infrared heat which helps keep the metabolism from declining. It seems that the most biologically friendly thing to do after nightfall is to read a book next to the fire. Which may inevitably put you to sleep and possibly burn your house down. Soooo... once again going to bed shortly after nightfall seems the most natural. 250 W red lights are also an option but do still put one to sleep, meaning melatonin is produced, but since followed by sleep not a bad thing. Staying in a limbo of no sleep/ melatonin production is I believe where the harm lies.

 

[lampofred]

My understanding based on Peat's writings/interviews is that serotonin is converted into melatonin as a protective reaction, and anything that raises adrenaline will increase this conversion. Melatonin is a stress hormone, but it is far healthier than serotonin. The most optimal state however is when serotonin, melatonin, adrenaline are all low as a result of good thyroid/respiration.

Also I thought red light does decrease melatonin, never heard that blue/violet/green light decreases melatonin but red/yellow/orange light does not.

 

[RealNeat]

My understanding based on Peat's writings/interviews is that serotonin is converted into melatonin as a protective reaction, and anything that raises adrenaline will increase this conversion. Melatonin is a stress hormone, but it is far healthier than serotonin. The most optimal state however is when serotonin, melatonin, adrenaline are all low as a result of good thyroid/respiration.

Also I thought red light does decrease melatonin, never heard that blue/violet/green light decreases melatonin but red/yellow/orange light does not.

Im confused by your second sentence did you make an error? Blue light and green to an extent suppresses melatonin, red light and orange doesnt as much. It sounds like a very strange phenomenon for the body to increase the conversion of serotonin to melatonin when adrenaline is raised, wouldn't that be counter productive to survival?

 

[postman]

If you think melatonin is falsely correlated with sleep try taking a melatonin pill and see what happens

 

[RealNeat]

This excerpt from the Gary Null 1996 interview offers some clarification also.

PEAT: Okay, you mentioned the hormones estrogen and how it relates to melatonin. With increasing age, people have made a big thing of the fact that melatonin, which peaks about 3AM in everyone, that this peak is a little bit smaller in old age. But it happens that...with aging, as the thyroid decreases, the melatonin decreases, because when thyroid is active, your melatonin comes up as an antioxidant defense against that the high metabolic rate that thyroid can stimulate. So when your thyroid is low, the melatonin is low, when your thyroid is high, the melatonin is high, in a logical adaptation -- because it is an antioxidant.

But the function of melatonin all by itself, when it isn't surrounded by the appropriate other conditions, melatonin, in studies done in pig tissue, by a man named (Sirotkin?), pigs are relatively close to humans in having daytime habits, nighttime sleep and so on, which is very important for melatonin because it's a nighttime dominant hormone -- in pigs, he found that melatonin suppresses progesterone and raises estrogen, and this happens to be the same thing that low thyroid does.

So if the melatonin rises in proportion to your thyroid, it doesn't matter that it is having these pro-estrogen, anti-progesterone effects, because the thyroid is doing exactly the opposite to those hormones and is taking care of the situation, because thyroid gets rid of the excess estrogen while...being totally responsible for producing progesterone. But if you take melatonin out of context, as he did in the pig study, you're going to get an exactly anti-thyroid effect, deranging those hormones in the direction of stress and aging.

Some of the current publicity that is used to promote the fact that melatonin is used to make you go to sleep, it happens to be also a thing that goes up during hibernation, and its function is to lower the body temperature, and remember the hospitalized patients -- the ones who had the lowest temperatures were the least likely to survive, because as the thyroid goes down and your body temperature falls, you lose a lot of your immune functions and tissue repair capacity. So lowering your body temperature does make you hibernate and it does make you sleep, but you don't want to use something out of context to force that.

The studies that have been used to advocate melatonin's possibly anti-aging effect were done on mice and rats, and it turns out that they are very opposite to human beings and pigs, because they work at night in general and sleep in the daytime, and so melatonin for them has exactly the opposite meaning that it does for people and pigs. And for example, in humans and rats, melatonin raises prolactin, but in humans, prolactin knocks out progesterone production and causes infertility and stress and osteoperosis for example.

But in rats, it happens, and mice, it happens...prolactin raises their progesterone, and progesterone has the pro-life, anti-aging effect. So melatonin has been confused by a lot of this rodent based research which is opposite in many ways to what it does in people and pigs.

 

[boris]

@RealNeat

anybody have more info on those hospitalized patients where the lower temp had higher mortality?

 

[baccheion]

He seems to be about avoiding melatonin release until in bed trying to sleep. For example, sitting in darkness during the day isn't advisable. He also didn't seem to be against melatonin supplementation. Rather, he said something about taking more than 1 mg.

One male (Jeff Bowles) had labs run after taking megadose melatonin and progesterone was high.

Women taking 3 mg melatonin delayed/reversed menopause.