Part 6: (Pineal) Melatonin Warning

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Welcome to Part 6 of our Master Your Sleep series!

In this segment, we’ll dive into the crucial role of melatonin produced by the pineal gland and discuss important warnings about melatonin supplementation. Join us as we explore how to optimize your sleep naturally and safely.

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Prefer reading? Check out the transcript below:

Now, I'm guessing that many of you are probably asking, "Should I take melatonin?" My personal bias on this is, except in rare cases, no, for the following reason: melatonin has a second function, which is that melatonin also suppresses the onset of puberty. In kids, and especially in babies, melatonin isn't just released in the evening 12 to 16 hours after we wake, melatonin is released chronically, or tonically, throughout the day and night, and that chronic or tonic release of melatonin is known to suppress some of the other hormones in other regions of the brain that trigger the onset of puberty.

Now, if you or your child has been taking melatonin, don't freak out. As always, any kind of supplement or anything that you're going to take or think about taking, you really need to consult with your doctor. I've said this many times on this podcast and it's in the show notes, et cetera, but before you remove anything or add anything to what you're already doing, please do consult with a healthcare professional.

However, melatonin is known to suppress the onset of puberty, so much so that regular, cyclic, cycled periods of melatonin release from the pineal really correlate with the onset of puberty and early adulthood. Meaning as we start secreting melatonin only at night, that's also when we tend to transition out of puberty.

Now, there are a lot of things that correlate in our nervous system, so that doesn't necessarily mean it controls it, but in this case, we know, based on lots of data, endocrinology, and so forth, that melatonin suppresses the onset of puberty. So supplementing melatonin could be problematic for that reason, but if you've already gone through puberty, it could also have some impact on other hormone systems in your body, so that's why I personally don't like to use melatonin to fall asleep. There's another reason, which is that melatonin will help you fall asleep but it won't help you stay asleep, and many people who take melatonin find that they wake up three to five hours later unable to fall back asleep.

Part of the reason for that might be that melatonin purchased over the counter can be very inconsistent in its dosage. You can buy it over the counter in most areas of the world, even though it's a hormone, which is a little unusual. You can't just go into a pharmacy, at least in the US, and buy testosterone or cortisol or estrogen; you need a prescription. But you can go buy melatonin for whatever reason. I don't know the reasons for that legality, but it's been shown many times, and now I'm borrowing from some items that were in Matt Walker's book, "Why We Sleep," where he stated there is evidence that, in commercially available melatonin, the amount of melatonin has been tested for various brands. It can range anywhere from being 15% of what's listed on the bottle, so if they list this as 100 milligrams, it would be a tremendously high dose, it turns out it's only 15 milligrams in that particular pill or capsule, or up to 400 times more than what's listed on the bottle, so it's completely unregulated.

For those of you taking melatonin, I will discuss at the end of the podcast some other potential alternatives that are probably safer and don't have these issues. So should you take melatonin?

My personal bias is no, but for many people, they find that it does help them, and so if you do find it helps you, then just consider what I'm saying in light of the other practices that you're doing and talk to your healthcare professional.

Okay, so the rhythm of cortisol and melatonin is what we call endogenous. It's happening in us all the time without any external input. In fact, if we were in complete darkness, living in a cave with no artificial lights whatsoever, or we were in complete brightness where we never experienced any darkness, these rhythms of cortisol and melatonin would continue. You would have a bump in cortisol, or a pulse in cortisol, that would drop off with time, and then melatonin would come up about 12 to 14 hours later, but these endogenous systems of our body, which are both hormonal and neural, were set so that external things could govern when they happen.

Thank you for joining us for Part 6 of our Master Your Sleep series!

This concludes our journey into understanding and improving your sleep. We hope you found the information valuable and insightful.

If you missed any part of the series or want to rewatch the video or listen to the podcast, simply tap the link below to access the entire series.

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