Melatonin-The Clock Hormone
 
 Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the brain's pineal gland, a small
organ behind the eyes that coordinates seasonal changes in the body
and that helps to promote sexual maturity in adolescents. Mounting
evidence suggests that it plays a critical role in regulating our
circadian rhythms, the regular biological and sleep cycles associated
with the 24-hour rotation of the earth. Moreover, recent research
shows that melatonin may also be a key to the aging process.
 
 Our lives are divided into a fairly well-ordered routine of waking
and sleeping, eating and working (at least some of the time), not
to mention playing, if time off is granted for good behavior. Those of
us who have ever labored on a night shift, though, or crossed
multiple time-zones on a plane might be familiar with that unsettling
feeling of being "turned around" in our daily schedules, out of synch
with the normal cycles of life. The cause of this phenomenon seems
to be melatonin, or rather, the lack of it.
 
 Studies show that the hormone is the mechanism by which information
about whether it is night or day is transmitted to the brain, which
otherwise is unable to detect any difference. Melatonin production
occurs almost entirely at night and is actually stimulated by darkness;
bright light suppresses its secretion. This discovery led researcher
Alfred J. Lewy, of the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland,
to test melatonin on people with sleep disorders, including chronic
insomnia, seasonal affective disorder (winter depression), jet lag,
and problems resulting from night-shift work. He found that melatonin
could simulate darkness, essentially fooling the body's internal clock
into registering that it is night and time to sleep. Major trials are
currently under way to further investigate melatonin's potential in
treating people with dysfunctional biological clocks.
 
 Mounting evidence also suggests that melatonin may possess potent
antioxidative properties, especially versus free radicals, the
molecules or molecular fragments containing an unpaired electron
that many experts identify as causing the degenerative effects
associated with aging. Dr. Russel J. Reiter, of the University of
Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, conducted a study in which
rats were fed carcinogen-laced food that damages DNA by producing a
host of oxygen-based free radicals, such as hydroxyl. Dr. Reiter and
his team discovered that rats treated with melatonin prior to ingesting
the carcinogens sustained 41 to 99 percent less genetic damage than
untreated animals. The range of damage strongly correlated to the
amount of melatonin each rat received. These dramatic results, he
says, hold great hope for treating numerous illnesses linked to free
radical damage, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
 
 Some researchers are strongly convinced that melatonin may even
represent a remedy against aging itself. Walter Pierpaoli, head
of the Institute for Biomedical Research in Switzerland, reports that
administering the hormone to mice for a year extended the rodents'
life expectancy by six months, the equivalent of 20 years in humans.
 
 According to Pierpaoli, the pineal gland, the organ that secretes
melatonin, regulates not only the body's daily rhythms but its
seasonal changes as well, which he says are much more pronounced
than circadian fluctuations. This seasonal clock, in his view, slows
down as the body perceives a gradual fading in nightly melatonin levels.
Because melatonin provides a boost to the body's entire hormonal system,
this decline in production of the hormone triggers a wave of general
age-related changes. When Pierpaoli implanted the pineal glands of
young mice into the brains of old mice, the aging mice regained much
of their youthful vigor and maintained excellent health all through their
maximum life span. When he did the experiment in reverse, transplanting
the pineal glands of old mice into young mice, the recipients aged at
a very accelerated rate.
 
 Pierpaoli emphatically warns against giving supplemental melatonin
to a young, healthy person, cautioning that it is unwise to
prematurely tamper with the body's natural processes. However, once
aging's degenerative effects become manifest later in life, he
concludes, melatonin may be essential in postponing the rate of
aging and, by extension, in prolonging life expectancy.
 
 
WHAT DO OTHERS IN THE BUSINESS OF SELLING MELATONIN HAVE TO SAY?
 
Abstract # 17.THE MOST AFFORDABLE ANTI-AGING THERAPY
 
William Faloon, Vice-President, The Life Extension Foundation,
Hollywood, FL
 
FDA regulation causes many anti-aging therapies to be cost prohibitive
for the average American. Some members of the Life Extension Foundation
spend in excess of $25,000.00 annually for growth hormone, DHEA,
thymosin, and other hormone replacement could be under $5,000.00
a year.
 
One hormone replacement therapy that has slipped through the FDA's
bureaucratic price-inflating barrier is melatonin. Natural melatonin
synthesis declines with aging and many of the degenerative
diseases associated with aging can be attributed to melatonin deficiency.
Fortunately, melatonin replacement therapy is affordable to everyone,
which means that for less than $5.00 a month, people 40 years of age
and older can take a 3 mg. melatonin supplement every night.
 
Having assured the reader that they can at least afford this therapy,
I will briefly describe some new facts about this remarkable anti-aging
hormone. In August 1994, The New York Academy of Sciences published a
588 page book of scientific studies investigating current means of
slowing aging and preventing cancer. There were fifteen new papers
presented on melatonin in this book that help to clarify the potential
role this hormone plays in preventing disease and extending lifespan.
These new studies suggest that melatonin may be the single most
important component of a scientific life extension program.
 
Melatonin is a potent antioxidant. Most antioxidant nutrients have
difficulty penetrating cell membranes. Melatonin, on the other hand,
enters cells and subcellular compartments with ease which is crucial
in protecting intracellular molecules from oxidative damage. An
antioxidant molecule must have access to subcellular compartments
(i.e. the mitochondria) in order to quench the hydroxyl radicals,
considered by some to be the most damaging of all radicals.
 
Experimental human studies conducted in Europe indicate that melatonin
may be an important adjuvant therapy in the treatment of most forms of
cancer. When advanced cancer patients are given low doses of
interleukin-2 (3 million i.u. subcutaneously, six out of seven nights
for six weeks) and high doses of melatonin significant percentage of
cancer patients. We conclude that melatonin, which is available over-
the-counter in the U.S., is the most cost-effective anti-aging therapy
available.
 
 
 
 
John Cottingham                     "KNOWLEDGE is of two kinds: we know
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OR                                   find information upon it."
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