Melatonin and the Optics of the Human Body

[Rinse & rePeat]

“In 1994 A.V. Sirotkin found that melatonin inhibits progesterone production but stimulates estrogen production, and it’s widely recognized that melatonin generally inhibits the thyroid hormones, creating an environment in which fertilization, implantation, and development of the embryo are not possible. This combination of high estrogen with low progesterone and low thyroid decreases the resistance of the organism, predisposing it to seizures and excitotoxic damage, and causing the thymus gland to atrophy.” -Ray Peat

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

“Cyclical exposure to melatonin can have an effect on the reproductive system opposite to that of chronic exposure, and the way exogenous melatonin is delivered to the animal can have unexpected effects on the actual amount of melatonin circulating in the blood (Wright and Alves, 2001). The actual amount of melatonin in the tissues, its relation to the normal cycling of the animal, and the influence of temperature, are often disregarded in melatonin research, making it hard to interpret many of the publications.” -Ray Peat

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

Almost any kind of stress increases the formation of melatonin.” -Ray Peat

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

“Adequate vitamin E is extremely important. There are several prescription drugs that protect against serotonin excess, but thyroid and gelatin (or glycine, as in magnesium glycinate) are protective against the serotonin and melatonin toxicities.” -Ray Peat

 

[Giraffe]

Raymond Peat - The Thyroid - 1996 Gary Null radio

"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." -- Ray Peat

 

[moa]

i have experienced with melatonin this past 12 days or so, to help me sleep earlier and have more deep sleep.

i used 1mg then 0.5mg and then 0.25mg.

if I'm already sleepy, i go to sleep fast, and next day I'm kind of ok but then it tends to me things after a few days and i get insomnia.

so my overall feeling is not that good but that's too early to say for sure. maybe I'll try 4mg or 6mg and see if that's working better ? i was afraid to try that much, any side effects to expect ?

cypro 1mg was much better for sleep but i cannot take that any longer, since i think it gives painful constipation Ibs-c symptoms.

 

[moa]

i might say, when i sleep, i do sleep well, but the problem is that i sorry to late, like 7h delayed, and sometimes i don't sleep at all.

but when i do sleep, i am able to sleep well.

 

[moa]

first night after taking 4mg melatonin.

it did worried to put me at sleep earlier than usual, i slept 6h, waking up much earlier than usual. sleep quality i feel mostly ok.

bad reactions : my smartwatch has registered a quite unusual spike in body temperature following the first 3h of sleep.

my body temperature in the meeting, measured with precision is lower than usual, under 36 Celsius.

it caused me some acid reflux, nothing too bad, but the sphincter has relaxed during the night. was it not supposed to cure GERD, not cause it ?