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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 [log in to unmask] a subject, or we know where we can OR find information upon it." [log in to unmask] Dr. Samuel Johnson