How to Master Your Melatonin and Optimize Your Sleep - with Dr. Deanna Minich | EP168

if it works in the plant to optimize its phytochemicals for the survival in that environment and then within us in our mitochondria it just tells me that from a survival longevity and aging perspective it would behoove us to ensure that we had good levels of [Music] [Applause] melatonin hello everyone I'm Dr David pretter welcome back to the empowering neurologist this is going to be one of those back by popular demand episodes we're going to again visit the notion of how we can use melatonin what are the implications of its use how safe is it how effective is it why would we use it Etc you may recall we did another show about melatonin several months ago with Dr Dianna minich and she is going to join us again today because there's been such an incredible response to wanting more information about this ever more popular supplement let me tell you a little bit more about Dr minich Deanna minich is a certified functional medicine practitioner and a nutrition scientist International leure teacher and author with over 20 years of experience in Academia and in the food and dietary supplement Industries throughout the years she's been active as a functional medicine clinician in clinical trials and in her own clinical practice as well she is the author of six consumer books on Wellness topics four book chapters and 50 scientific Publications her academic background is in nutrition science including a master of science degree in human nutrition and dietetics from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a doctorate in medical Sciences from the University of Gran in the Netherlands for a decade she was part of a research team led led by Dr Jeffrey Bland he's been on our program many times really the founder of functional medicine so I'm very excited to learn more about melatonin today so we're going to Jump Right In well Adana welcome back to the program it's so great to see you good to be here with you talking about one of our favorite topics melatonin yeah in June of 2022 in jamama journal the American Medical Association there was a review that looked at let me read the top the title is trends in use of melatonin supplement among us adults 1999 to 2018 and it really I think brought to our attention the fact that there's a heck of a lot more melatonin being used so uh I wanted to you know break down what this is all about why we use it but uh you were kind enough to send me a list of some ideas about personalizing optim optimizing and personalizing your melatonin usage since I know so many of our viewers right now are using melatonin myself in included at times so um I thought that'd be a good place to start but actually prior to that I had a couple of questions I wanted to go through and first um I think a lot of people wondering when we buy a melatonin supplement in the health food store online where does that come from what is the origin of that melatonin that's a great first um question to get into because as you and I know uh being entrenched in the dietary supplement World there can be a lot of um there's a whole spectrum of quality and different things to consider so back in I would say the late 1950s is when melatonin really came to light so to speak and people started looking at it as a supplement and bringing it in and at that time it was made from the pineal gland of animals but it was outrageous because it took something on the order of like 2500 pineal glands to get like a 100 milligrams of melatonin so that's not sustainable it's not kind and it's also so um just with viruses and prons there could be all kinds of uh just untoward effects or safety issues so what happened from that point on is that people figured out how to make melatonin very cheaply in a commercial way and so uh and I've actually dived into some of the patents to look at how melatonin is created commercially and if you look at a lot of these processes many times what they do is they start with a prochemical source of some type and then it's run through a series of reactions so 99% of the the Melatonin on the market is synthesized from chemicals there's a paper you probably have seen it it there's a paper from 2018 and essentially these authors had identified 13 different contaminants that can be found in these synthetic melatonin supplements so everything from phalam uh types of derivatives or even for mahide derivatives and so I think that that's that's one piece of it you know most melatonin on the market is synthetic it's got other things in there which can change the activity and then further on to that because it is part of the supplement conversation the packaging of melatonin counts and most of the Melatonin that's out there it's in bottles and so when we open up the bottle and then we start to expose the Melatonin to things like air or even light it starts to to degrade the Melatonin so that's why having you know blister packs you know single use you know we we need to be thinking about all of that and also in full disclosure I am chief science officer at Symphony Natural Health which makes herbatonin which is a plant melatonin so it doesn't have a lot of those issues that I spoke about so there is melatonin in plants there's we know that I think walnuts and and uh perhaps cherries are high in melatonin y relatively high but certainly not high enough to think that you're going to eat Walnuts and it's going to give you a slug of melatonin I actually did the calculations on that I don't think I spoke about that last time but um so first of all I think just to back up because people want to know like how much Melatonin should they be taking and there is a range and if we just look at pineal gland derived melatonin there's actually a curve an endogenous curve so children make about 1 milligram and as we move into middle age it is about 0.3 milligrams and then as we move into our fifth and six then on up decades you know about 0.1 milligrams so if we just backtrack the mathematics of that and say okay I I'll I'll just give myself as an example I'm almost 53 what if I just want to get back to that 0.3 that I had when I was 35 so if we do the calculations and the thing about plants that I love about plant plans is that in some ways they're unpredictable right so if you just take a study where they actually measured the melatonin in a tar cherry and then you take that study with its range and then do the calculation for the very physiologic amount of 0.3 milligrams what you get is and I've actually memorized this number it's 2,718 tart cherries in order to get 0.3 milligrams and that will dramatically lower your uric acid as well I might add so but how does that when you say that we have a certain level of melatonin obviously declines with age um is that that's produced in the body in a 24-hour period it is produced primarily at night so the most so first of all I think just again set the stage for the listeners melatonin is found ubiquitously so in every body compartment more or less we have some degree of melat Onin but the kind of melatonin that we're referring to here is the true endocrine or neural hormone melatonin which is released from the pineal gland at night at the Pinnacle of darkness which is between 2 and 4 a.m. so during the day we don't have melatonin circulating not from the pineal gland that ramps up as it becomes dimmer and dimmer as we make our way through the day so actually it's called dim light melatonin onset so as it becomes dimmer and dimmer our melatonin endogenously goes up from the pineal gland that starts to lower our core body temperature it gets released systemically goes into uh the the systemic circulation and then starts to upregulate clock genes and what was really interesting for me just by way of I continue to read the Melatonin literature and the liver cells have a high number of of these oscillating clock genes so you having a focus in neurology one of the things that I think about is liver detoxification brain detoxification through the glymphatic fluid all of which melatonin from the pine gland is actually having this Ripple through effect of at night so I mean it's it's an interesting point then that this melatonin isn't just something people should be thinking about in terms of maybe it's going to help uh reduce the onset uh the time it takes for me to fall asleep that there are wide ranging issues in the body in the hepatic cells uh in the immune system for example that a lot of chronobiology focuses to some degree on the level of melatonin at night yeah and in fact I was just looking at a study last night it was an animal study in which they gave the animals melatonin in their drinking water during the day or at night and they found that there was no effect of taking melatonin during the day it was at night when these animals were drinking the water that they had a boost in their longevity so so interestingly the receptor then for melatonin may also not be as active during the day despite the fact that here's this Exogen uh administered at melatonin still nothing happened uh beneficial I think from what you're saying because maybe the receptor was less active could very well be you know um and that's again speaking about melatonin in the true endocrine way we know that there are two melatonin receptors so melatonin receptor one and then two there are three different nuclear receptors and by way of thinking of all of The receptors we can also have Gene variants for those receptors so when people say oh well you know I'm taking 20 milligrams of melatonin and I just think about you know are we saturating and super saturating our receptors to the point that we're not receiving the signal anymore which again is another reason for my advocacy for a lower dose of Melatonin right to kind of start there at that physiologic level to prime those receptors to work well so uh I I think what you're saying then is maybe if I'm extrapolating that perhaps it's not the best idea to be I don't mean Reliant but at least taking melatonin on an every every night basis ter of receptor sensitivity no I I'm I would say you know to clarify that what I'm speaking to is when people take Supra physiological doses that could in essence super saturate The receptors I think you know just a modest amount of 0.3 milligrams taken on a daily basis for an aging person to help with markers of antioxidant activity anti-inflammatory action you know a lot of those different features would be advised you know I I I think you know I was on a different podcast and um his name Dr dick and weatherbe you know as we were talking about melatonin he said you know this sounds like melatonina pause that people don't get their melatonin levels back so I the way I think of it is you know how do we again fill our Gap with modest amounts that bring us back into just again smoothing that that that curve a bit but not the high doses that may play into what you're speaking to which might be the receptor activity right so I I don't think you would get that with a physiologic dose with what we normally produce and then also taking that at night before bedtime about an hour um so you know I I think that there's a lot of nuance there well melatonina pause I'm still stuck on that from a couple that it's a great book title you need to get the URL and that that' be should be your next you're right I do he gave me full permission to use it so that was not my invention that was just him that's awesome absolutely hey guys we're going to get right back to the podcast in just a moment but I wanted to let you know that this podcast is being sponsored by Purity coffee this is the coffee I've been drinking for the past several years why this is USDA certified organic it's thirdparty verified to be mold free and pesticide free it's the product of what we call regenerative agriculture and it's a great tasting cup of coffee a great way to start your day they have a new product called balance and the advantage of balance is it has only 30% of the caffeine of typical coffee that's a real Advantage if you want to have two or maybe three cups in the morning and you might otherwise get a little overly jazzed I know what that's like and maybe you might want to have a a cup of coffee perhaps later in the afternoon but you're fearful about the caffeine content all of the bioactive components are still there so uh this is balance and you can get this for a 30% discount on your first order by using the chomo code pear mutter and going to the link at the bottom of your screen let's get right back to our podcast let's go back to the light issue we know that uh we wake up uh we're exposed to light melatonin levels uh bottom out and uh but yet in the evening we need our Darkness especially as it relates to the blue spectrum of the light that we are exposed to so how about some just general recommendations for people to allow their pineals to come online make melatonin and allow us to at least derrive benefit first of all from our endogenously produced melatonin I'm so glad that you're starting there because you know quite honestly this whole foray into melatonin has changed even how I approach nutrition and often what I'm saying now is we have an operating system we're run by rhythms of light and dark and if we don't get those right then eating and sleeping and activity I mean those are all in my mind kind of secondary to being housed within this framework of light and dark so yeah let let's start by um you know one of the first practices is making sure that you get Bright Morning Light so and even if you know you know that I live in the Pacific Northwest and it isn't always so bright but even cloudy days sure is in the summer time though but but all throughout the year we need to be doing that because getting the bright light in the morning first thing actually helps our melatonin production at night so most people don't put that together as part of that equation now at night I I think we have to hack our environments a little bit better in the way of you know one of the things that I have done is just even um change the dimness of my lights seasonally so you know of course the computer screen like changing the dim uh Ju Just changing the light intensity right changing your phone intensity now one of the things I don't think I mentioned it last time but I use an app I use an app called light meter it's free and as our our friend and colleague Dr Jeffrey Bland would always say if you don't measure it you don't change it right so one of the things to get smart about the light in your environment is actually to measure it so one Luxe is equal to seeing a candle flame about 3 feet away so Lux is a measure of light and you want your bedroom your sleeping room to be under one Lux so it's got to be really low and you don't know what it's actually at unless you measure it so if you open up the app let's just say you download the app you use the the camera on the phone to actually just at the eye level just kind of see what what you're seeing and then it will give you a read out of the Lux so I'm intentionally in my home office where I have a big window in front of me this gives me 5,000 Lux which is what we would want because during the day we want a lot of light but at night I actually have it now so that our sleeping room is under zero Lux can you repeat the name of the app it's called light meter light meter Lux app got it so you say we should have one Lux or less uh in order to go to sleep at night so really really dark well you know you might be surprised and again unless you actually measure it you don't know what it looks like um when I have zero luxs in my sleeping room it's still a little bit grayish it's not like has to be pitch black you might be surprised now you and I both have light colored eyes this is uh another Factor personalization of our environments people with light colored eyes so that would be blue eyes green eyes and even light brown eyes they're even more susceptible to the suppressive effects of artificial blue light so there was one study in which they looked at that comparison and showed something like you know a 177% greater suppression so for us you and me our light at night we have to be particularly sensitive to what we've got uh in the way of electricity light bulbs screens all of it because you know quite honestly and I've been telling a lot of my functional medicine colleagues because I teach for the institute for functional medicine especially in the environmental health module you know many times we focus on plastic we focus on heavy metal and I just was talking with them not too long ago and I said you know what's really interesting is that artificial light at night which Goes by Alan as an acronym is one of the most societally accepted endocrine disruptors it doesn't just impact melatonin production but because melatonin is connected to so many other hormones we're impacting thyroid function we're impacting sex steroid hormones and uh potentially into fertility adrenal hormones they're all impacted by artificial light at night not to mention this is really really intriguing and very very uh I think very important in the intro I I I made people aware of the fact that we were going to have this uh we're really G to get into the weeds a little bit but think about this then through the mechanism of melatonin production or suppression artificial light at night can have wide ranging effects on other hormones and really significant parts of our physiology and certainly IM IM function as well yes absolutely and even metabolic issues like insulin sensitivity glucose levels you know there's research I you'll probably talk about it that shows that wearing these blue light wearing uh blocking glasses has been shown to actually improve insulin sensitivity and glucose levels in people who've had issues with that yeah in fact I um there's one study it was a small study I think it was done in Japan and they had men who were healthy who had no met abolic disregulation wearing blue light blocking glasses 2 to 3 hours before bedtime for a month and at the end of the study they measured a number of different metabolic parameters and what they found was that there were statistically significant changes in fasting plasma glucose and the Homa score and the Homa score is a measure of insulin resistance insulin sensitivity so even if you're healthy and you've got no metabolic issues wear the blue light blocking glasses uh you know I have them here I'm not wearing them now because it's 10:30 in the morning and you know I actually want blue light I I don't want to suppress it but by the time it starts to get dimmer and dimmer I have been consistently wearing and even traveling with my blue light blocking glasses as well as my my herbatonin you know just kind of I've got my little composite of things that I need to ensure that I stay in Rhythm wherever I'm at well hi everyone Dr David PR here we hope you're enjoying this content and if you would do so go ahead and hit the like button and if you're not already a subscriber to our Channel please consider doing so uh we're really grateful to have you as part of our community so let's get right back to the presentation well it's it's 1:30 PM where I am and so I'm almost at my caffeine curfew which is 2 pm and I think uh we'll talk about that you know let's just jump into it what the heck um you had mentioned that there's an interaction between caffeine and melatonin that should be aware of what do we do with that information well just like you mentioned your caffeine and curfew you know we have to start and I didn't make up that term by the way well no but you you mentioned it for yourself that after a certain point you can't be having caffeine first of all we just know that caffeine can interfere with healthy sleep and so caffeine and melatonin compete for a similar liver enzyme for metabolism so if you have caffeine or or caffeinated beverages coffee whatever it is even chocolate too late at night what can happen is you start to distort the metabolism of melatonin you might lengthen it you might shorten it you know again it just kind of depends on your your individual dynamics of that particular enzyme you know another thing that so many people ask me about as it relates to caffeine and the pharmacokinetics of melotonin is how do I even know if I have enough so one of the things that I have done personally is I I do supplement right I do take that 0.3 milligrams and I did the Dutch test so when I I I just wanted to look at my urinary metabolite of melatonin and that's typically what is produced it's not you don't measure melatonin you measure the biotransformed metabolite of melatonin and you measure it in the urine so when I got my results back and of course you have to realize that there could be many different factors which can play into the inaccuracy of that test like if I got bright light I could have suppressed my melatonin all of those things um but what I found was that my melatonin at least my metabolism of it was in The Sweet Spot which told me that most likely the dose I was taking is in the sweet spot for my pharmacokinetics like how I'm metabolizing melatonin the amount I'm taking and you know it works well for me in terms of sleep but I don't just take it for sleep I take it for other things well like what well because I am in my 50s and uh you know one of the things I think that sticks out in my mind I don't know if you know who Brian Johnson is and some of these other of course I do longevity biohacking kind of people I mean they they take melatonin but one of the studies that really impacted me was a study done I believe it was in 1988 and it was with animals and it was um taking two groups of animals 10 in each group and and in one of the animal groups they gave those animals uh melatonin in their water and that was at night everything else was the same their diet was the same the environmental conditions the lighting all of that was the same and they tracked and these mice that they they had for the experiment were actually a bit older so they weren't young mice they were older mice so kind of like me and they they had these mice over time and they tracked them until they died and basically what they found was that the mice that had melatonin in their water at night had a 20% greater lifespan so they live something like 930 days versus like 752 some OD days that has always stuck in my mind so why do I take melatonin it's not for the sleep and I think for many people they have pigeon hold melatonin something so biodynamically complex into the singular action of sleep when we know that it's actually doing so many other things so I'm doing it more for oh by the way in that study they also mentioned that the the appearance of the mice looked different so the mice who did not have the melatonin in their water their posture became hunched over they started losing their fur um they just didn't look healthy they they started to shrink in their body weight and for the animals that had the melatonin in their water at night and I keep in at night because there was another study where they gave melatonin in the water during the day and they did not see those those aspects of longevity so I thought that that was fascinating you mentioned uh antioxidant function as relates to melatonin how do we position melatonin in the Panorama of our endogenous antioxidants and certainly how do we look at it as a player in whatever we may be supplementing well some people would call it the master antioxidant we've probably heard that um for glutathione and other types of antioxidants here's the thing with melatonin melatonin is amphilic an amphilic means that it's fat soluble and it's water soluble which means that it can Traverse through many different body organs tissues it can be in the brain which is fatty it can be in the blood which is watery so it's very unique in its antioxidant capacity so one molecule of melatonin can can scavenge up to 10 different free radicals whereas with vitamin C you might get a Scavenging of like one to two very specific radicals uh when you compare glutathione to melatonin what you see is that melatonin can scavenge more in the way of the hydroxy radical compared with uh glutathione so you know there there's I I don't want to say that it's just all about melatonin melatonin works as a team player and it can actually stimulate the production of glutathione and a number of different antioxidant enzymes and and can actually Salvage glutathione but as a team player um what is a Synergy between melatonin and vitamin D yeah that that's really interesting and and again you're aware of the review article that we published um on is melatonin the next vitamin D so what is a Synergy there was there was a study I think this really Nails it there was a study in which they were looking at women it was a smaller study I 70s some OD women and basically showing that for women who had vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency they also had an association with lower amounts of melatonin when the vitamin D levels were corrected melatonin levels seem to be improved so we do need to be thinking about I kind of see it like a triangle vitamin D melatonin magnesium and so if we're overdoing vitamin D you you know how do we stretch and change the the Magnesium because we need magnesium for the different hydroxylates enzymes to activate vitamin D and then we're also kind of pulling on that that connection over to melatonin so to me you know when I think of sunlight I'm thinking of vitamin D I think most people do we also need to be thinking about that Darkness back to what you were saying before about Darkness deficiency that we're not getting the balance we're getting the vitamin D perhaps perhaps that's still a big question I think people are starting to get a bit more knowledgeable about that but we also have to complement that with the MIT the the Melatonin because I do think that they're working in tandem you know there's kind of this yinyang approach uh you know it it becomes really relevant when we recognize how pervasive at least insufficiency by definition of vitamin D uh how in our society how that is you mentioned something earlier uh that uh they found a Japanese study in which uh men who were metabolically intact were evaluated and I was just I was thinking at that moment good luck in America trying to find adult men who are intact by all five measurements of metabolic syndrome good luck with that you're gonna have to search high and low to get your cohort um because of how just generally metabolically compromised we are um speaking of men versus women yeah uh you've made some comments that that uh melatonin production melatonin requirements even melatonin supplementation might well be looked at in terms of being gender specific well that is coming from from two things first of all um one of the things that I find really interesting and I've had a conversation with Emily rid Bal who is a nutritionist who's really into preconception health she's really bullish about melatonin and we were talking about um you know in terms of gender specificity are looking at maternal levels of melatonin so what's really important for I would say for men and women is melatonin is is important for fertility right so for the egg for the sperm they're they're both important but then as a a woman is if she decides to nurse her her baby that's really important because the Melatonin that is coming from the breast milk which we do not find in formulas by the way is helping to actually this was from an animal study helping to modulate the gut microbiome of the infant or in this case since it's animals The Offspring but essentially you know looking at the gut microbiome modulation of maternal supplementation of melatonin also looking at potentially better sleep for the mother better sleep for the infant you know so I think that that's really interesting and in terms of like female male bioavailability this is not my work this is from uh a study in which they found that bioavailability of melatonin is actually lower in men than women so that's uh you know by 50% so why are women more primed for the uptake of melatonin I I don't know but you know there there can be some hacks as far as you know how do you optimize that uptake you know how can you get that into the body how do you personalize that melatonin curve throughout the night well you mentioned something I think really interesting and that is the effect of uh breast milk melatonin on the developing microbiome and functionality of the microbiome in the uh infant what about the rest of us uh how does our own pineal gland produce melatonin affect our own microbiome you know um there is some more emerging work it's kind of interesting because the gut actually produces 400 times the amount of melatonin that the pineal gland does but yet I feel like we know less about it but what I find intriguing is that the gut derived melatonin is it's doing a lot of things or at least a lot of things are proposed so what is it doing in relationship to the gut microbiome well there were some inklings uh in the research to suggest that it may actually be changing the gut microbiome circadian rhythm or even its ability to produce things like short chain fatty acids now that's all very still preliminary it's it's very um cursory work it's nothing definitive it's nothing that we've seen this in people but I think it's pretty interesting because melatonin produced in the gut can change gut motility it can change uh gastric secretions and there is this this potential change of the the gut microbiome modulation and I kind of see that between two different compounds I've been doing a lot of research as well on polyphenols and seeing how how you know polyphenols together with melatonin seem to be having this connection to the gut microbiome as well as a chronobiotic effect I mean from a seasonal aspect of when we need certain things those to feel like the drivers within nature to kind of get us back into that Rhythm so what should somebody be thinking about uh if he or she uh is thinking well gosh I saw this podcast I've heard about melatone I think I might make sense I should be taking it what is their next step I mean can everybody or should everybody have a Dutch test and determine what what their Baseline metabolism is what their excretion is of a of melatonin metabolites or is there a more U userfriendly approach to getting started and following how a person is doing in terms of their supplement regimen yeah I would say to to Dive Right I mean so much depends on your age you know I think for most people in their middle age uh they need to be looking at a very lowd dose supplement of melatonin you know and what does that mean low dose can what kind of yeah let's go back to that so that 0.3 milligrams and again I'm I'm taking that from the curve of melatonin levels produced by the pineal gland so again I'm going back to what is traditionally formed from the pineal gland it's at about 0.3 in middle age so you know some people say well I want just a little bit more maybe you know just about a milligram but you know I I think lowd dose is a pretty good place to start I also think that choosing a good quality supplement like I was talking about herbatonin because there is a study in the molecules journal in 20121 where they actually took synthetic melatonin versus the herbatonin and did a series of tests and what they found was that in looking at inflammation that the herbatonin was able to quell anti had had 646 per greater anti-inflammatory activity it could also scavenge more free radicals up to like 470 per and there was even uh they did a skin cell line looking at reactive oxygen species and it was able to quell 100% more of those radicals so side by side what I would say is if you're going to take melatonin amplify the response if you're a biohacker an athlete an aging person you know just side by side make sure that you're getting other things naturally occurring in that plant melatonin so what we know about herbatonin is that it contains lutein zanthin and this is just natural because herbatonin is made from alala chlorella and rice and it's all made from those plants where they were in an environment to optimize the natural production of melatonin so it's not an extract it's just really bringing in the other things of the plants so I would say to to bring in something safe and packaged correctly like the herbatonin why do plants make melatonin well I know you and I had this conversation last time right we were talking about oxin and you know the reason why plants make melatonin is is actually the melatonin in the plant it's it's very different than how we're using melatonin in some ways but it can stimulate the production of other phytochemicals like even the glucosinolates which I'm a huge fan of so um you know again it it's driving that photosynthetic process in the chloroplast enabling it to you know optimize phytochemicals so you know that really speaks to me in terms of you know if it works in the plant to optimize its phytochemicals for the survival in that EnV environment and then within us in our mitochondria it just tells me that from a survival longevity and aging perspective it would behoove us to ensure that we had good levels of melatonin now I let's throw uh a little ringer in here and that is um that we change our dosage depending on the phase of the moon you you have to you have to open up about that I just learned about that study not too long ago because I got very much into all The rhythms right like we've got the Circadian rhythm the 24-hour Rhythm we have the circannual Rhythm which is the seasonal Rhythm and maybe if You' like we could talk a little bit about how even the birthday that you have can predispose you to certain risks for certain autoimmune diseases potentially because of the melatonin and vitamin D but anyway let's talk about the moon which is another layer of rhythms so um there was a study this is really intriguing because it was done in a sleep lab so without the influence of things like the light of the full moon or even the sunlight right so these these people were came into the sleep lab and then they track them over time for just to look at their endogenous melatonin levels and what was really intriguing is that four days before the full moon and four days after the full moon their melatonin in production just went like that it just came down um so and if you think about it many people will say and I've had this experience myself where they don't sleep very well during the full moon some people don't know why that is but they just don't see and then they think well it's too bright outside or you know there could be all those reasons but at least in this study the the variable of light was actually controlled for it and they still found a reduction of melatonin so we may need to actually be thinking about not just as seasonal and I'll actually be talking about about that at the plmi meeting in a few in a week or so um but we may need to adjust our melatonin seasonally when we have up and down levels especially as it relates to vitamin D and melatonin and then even through the month you know so if you don't want to have like all of that uh you know mental chaos and be thinking about all of that you know again this is what I keep coming back to kind of like just the the blue light blocking glasses adjusting the light and dark having the herbatonin to kind of smooth the Gap at that very low physiologic level I think you know just starting there to accommodate for whether it's the lunar cycle the circannual cycle um circadian rhythm and David I don't know if you want to talk about this but this is another area of Interest I just made an Instagram post I would also posit that melatonin could be seen as a molecule of Consciousness and the reason why I say that is because um there is some talk in the psychon neuroimmune literature about seeing different levels of melatonin even in people who meditate now we're not talking like a one-off meditation like let me just sit there and meditate and I'll get my melatonin in seasoned meditators who have been meditating for you know a longer duration like 10 years and more what they find is that melatonin levels endogenously are higher than that of non-meditators and I also go back because you know I my major was in biology but my minor was in English lit and much like you know your your kids being an artist and you know a medical doctor I kind of like the juxtaposition of those two and I think of even you know Renee dart back in the 17th century philosopher mathematician you know the pineal gland was seen as the seed of the Soul so I kind of find that you know I I'm starting to go bigger and broader thinking about you know do we really need all of these psychoactives do we really need to get into psilocybin and all of these things to have a higher Consciousness or are we losing that sense of awareness that sense of Consciousness because certain of these molecules that would keep us in tune with nature and with our own self-realization are declining if we're not attentive to those things so I'm just putting that out there it's wonderful speculation espe especially when you recognize what's going on with the biogenesis of melatonin in terms of its precursors and how that relates to neuro other aspects of neurochemistry you know I think back years ago uh prior to MRI I'm really dating myself now but when we only had CT scans and we would look between uh the hemispheres and there'd be this white dot on on some scans not all and we would say oh that's simply calcification pineal gland let's move on it's nothing important but one would wonder I mean the Cal the pineal gland does not calcify in everybody and you wonder really Visa the conversation that you're have we're having right now if we could analyze um those individuals uh with calcification versus those who have not experienced calcification in terms of various psychometric tests and determine if it in fact there is something uh going on when the pineal gland ostensibly because it's calcified is losing its functionality right who knows yeah yeah absolutely you know that's another feature of a lot of the Melatonin research is looking at pineal gland calcification and then people think well how do I find out I mean I I would just say you know it it is really interesting that that could happen that it can become uh more hardened more um crystalline uh you know that might even mirror what could happen in the cardio vascular system right so you know I I think again just how do we become more resilient um one thing that we we didn't touch on but by way of you mentioning calcification it made me think of it is just even stress because there is this Dynamic with cortisol and melatonin and some people will say well Deanna how do I really know if I need melatonin and I asked them to tell me a little bit about their lifestyle what they're up against you know I asked them to tell me their age and you know all of those factors really do play in and and stress is a big one because if we look at how melatonin is made even in that little pineal gland which by the way is the first endocrine gland to form in utero even before the others um what we see is that um you know the body makes melatonin from tryptophan and tryptophan has to convert to serotonin which then needs to convert to melatonin and that pathway actually is very encumbered with nutrients it's encumbered with lots of different enzymes including a methyl transferase and with methyl transferases as we know there can be genetic variants that tie into that so there can be so much variability and so the body delegates tryptophan very carefully 95% of tryptophan actually goes through the chenin pathway which gives us NAD and I think you were talking on one of your Instagram lives not too long ago about NAD and IVs and you know just all of the talk about NAD but anyway the the tryp toan most of it will go towards energy so when we're stressed we're going to take even more of that tripan to to run through that chenin pathway right we're going to have less left over to make melatonin and to even make serotonin so I want everybody to be thinking about that because in this modern day you know whether it's toxicity whether we're stressed all of these many things stack up to aligning to really needing to have just optimizing our melatonin levels so we're going to be even at greater Jeopardy maybe in our 20s we're down to 0.3 milligrams right like what our pineal gland can make just because of so many things fall short I think you bring up a very good point and I think probably the biggest influence in terms of diverting uh tryptophan away from serotonin production and into korenic uh that whole korenic acid pathway is inflammation yeah and you know we we know that there's so much inflammation as a consequence of our metabolic Mayhem as a consequence of our elevated blood sugar our levels of obesity our levels as mentioned of stress our lack of adequate restorative sleep uh these things all contribute to ramping up our set point of inflammation which directly impacts the biochemistry of uh in this case melatonin production by affecting dramatically its precursor which is serotonin we divert away from serotonin through this potentially brain toxic pathway the korenic acid path pathway via one of its metabolites that is certainly brain threatening so you know these things all feed in and I think that we didn't mention but it's worth mentioning that uh getting our metabolism back on track will allow us then to endogenously produce perhaps more physiologic levels of melatonin than we are currently doing and this Decay that we see with aging might well be somewhat explained by our risk of metabolic issues that are so prevalent you know I talk mentioned earlier that you know good luck finding a a a man uh in America the study that was done in Japan who's metabolically intact you 85% of American adults has at Le have at least one component of the metabolic syndrome so you know and those things are all ultimately harbingers of higher levels of inflammation I.E e ultimately going to compromise our ability to make melatonin via this kenic acid pathway so and translates into neuroinflammation you know into your your particular sphere right and then we see the issue with the glymphatic fluid exchange that's not working so well and we know that melatonin is important for the transport of a lot of those toxic amalo peptides and Hyper phosphorilated towel proteins and so if somebody's inflamed like you're speaking to they already have that as a they're inflaming right they're metabolically inflamed and you know they've got type 3 diabetes so to speak and so now we've got issues with with the brain and we start to set the stage metabolically for greater risk for dementia and neurodegenerative issues it gets back to sleep and perhaps the role of melatonin in sleep I mean that's when you activate this system to purge your brain the lymphatic system during deep sleep and I'm all about wearables you know I I'm going to tell you right now as we speak I'm going to tell you exactly what happened to yours truly last night okay so my sleep last night um was uh optimal uh I've done better but was at an 89 but I spent 2 hours and 38 minutes 32% of my night last night uh in deep Sleep which is when we activate the lymphatic system so you know maybe we're not going to measure melatonin and everybody in terms of its metabolites but people can get a wearable I mean there's so many wearables now that can give you that data as it relates to the quality and quantity of your sleep I happen to wear an aura ring but there were several of them out there now and that gives you an inference especially the Sleep onset part how long did it take you to fall asleep right last night for me six minutes so um and that's actually what melatonin helps with is that sleep latency that's right right yeah yeah let me get to something that I think people are talking about uh as it relates to this um sleep latency being reduced by melatonin I think many of us have experienced that we fall asleep even more quickly if we take melatonin but there is a discussion about rebound about people then two or three in the morning if they take melatonin they might wake up um how common is that and what can we do about it I think you have to look at when you take melatonin the personalized kinetics of it so um for some people they might be a fast met abizer they may need to take it with a little bit of fat so something like uh I I have a colleague who takes uh his herbatonin with a fish oil and that helps kind of uh just create that natural kind of a slower release right and also potentially getting into the brain better sometimes I think that when people are waking up at that you know it is kind of that time of the night like the 3:00 a.m wake up I I know somebody else who uh she and her family have a 2 a am wakeup thread like they all wake up at 2 am so wh why is that well you know there could be a lot of other things too um because melatonin production naturally is high at 2 am there could be and especially if somebody just happens to have a higher toxic load uh they might be having more activity at the level of the glymphatic fluid right there could be certain things that could get more disruptive and there there's a greater shift metabolically at that time and I know that um you know I'm married to an acupuncturist and he and I have these conversations all the time and even with within Chinese medicine and this is in scientific literature as well there are certain organ breakouts of hours right so between one and three right is liver time so you know when I would tell him that he's just right yeah so you know we think about when I think of like the time somebody's waking up when it's 1 to three I think of liver toxicity I start thinking of like what is is you know maybe melatonin is actually riling things up to kind of get things out and because there is more activity now there's no science to suggest that somebody waking up at 2 2 am is going to be more toxic and you know has has greater levels and all of that and their their Liver Health is you know being Amplified and you know uh being worked with but I I think I think we need to be looking at that from a personalized perspective and working on things like um metabol detoxification in tandem with sleep that to me would flag perhaps we need to do more and even during the day to help with that nighttime release yeah I think it's just uh important for people to grasp that uh sleep and nighttime is not when everything shuts down we have this sense that everything's turning off and uh it shuts down at night you know and that gets back even before traditional Chinese medicine to a veic medicine that it's really only a 12-hour day and that it it repeats itself so what goes on at night uh that that you can look upon 1 or 2 amm as being just like 1 or 2 pm when the sun is very high and fire is active paa is active and that what is the center of fire in Chinese medicine as you mentioned it's the liver and that's when things are happening now we know that the brain is actively consolidating memory and detoxifying itself in the middle of the night why we need sleep I did a podcast yesterday and they said what's the one thing on the top of the list that you would want to modulate in people to help reduce their risk for Alzheimer's and I said sleep better restorative sleep yeah and you know they were looking for the magic supplement or you know perhaps exercise but it is sleep who knew yeah we we need that and I think that for so long it's been heralded as like almost a badge of honor if you can go without sleep and like oh you know I only need four to five hours yeah right and we all did that you know especially during residency when you know you're making life and death decisions the next day and you didn't sleep because you were up all night in the emergency room that's a good person to be making those decisions that's for sure you know I I want to just mention to you you know because I I love this area and I like what you're saying about sleep too you know this I idea of the darkness right you know there are even um I don't know if you've seen these online but there are Darkness Retreats where people just go and for you know like a few days they're just in complete darkness and um you know I've been kind of looking at there there's one particular Retreat Center in Oregon that I keep looking at and you know they watch and monitor the people when they come out just in terms of their their uh senses just like how so many things change and I would just encourage people like you're mentioning sleep you know this Darkness deficiency idea is is huge you know I was on a panel with um people with from NASA and and other types of uh organizations really concerned about the ecosystems on the planet concerned about um you know just what we're doing with all of this toxic light and perhaps we can't sleep well because we've got this bombardment of all of this artificial light I mean if you look at the planet Earth from afar it just looks like a huge lit up Globe we're not in darkness as a planet so that just makes it I think even more difficult to find our Slumber to find and I would say sound too you know uh one thing that I'm very taken by with my Apple watch is it'll alarm uh uh it'll send me an alarm if there's too much ambient noise and you know this is uh your Apple watch will do that and you will be surprised I mean even uh if you're driving your car and the window's open and that sound uh is happening you'd be surprised at all of the ambient noise at high levels that we're exposed to yeah it's bad for your uh Hearing in the long run that's for sure but it's also very stressful it's also you getting to exactly what you talked about um I find that in the summertime where we go is incredibly quiet to the extent that it takes several days to get used to the fact that there's not all this noise around us and it absolutely heightens your senses and I think it's extremely healing and I I totally hear what you're saying about light as well um you know especially from monitors and televisions and things I'm in a studio right now with bright lights and uh you know and that's why I don't do these recordings you know very late in the day because I know it affects me yeah yeah good you know and I think it's so important to get the word out and I thank you for for having me back to talk about this because I feel like you know we talked about melatonin as a centerpiece here but there's something bigger and broader it's you know we're human beings that are misaligned to Natural rhythms and we really need to find our way back you know step by step whether it's blue light blocking glasses melatonin supplement you know whatever it is we need to find our way back to Nature we need to hear the frogs and see the stars evolutionary environmental mismatch that you know here our Evolution our genes have created a physiology that is just not lining up with our environment in so many ways the foods we eat the light to which we are exposed the sounds the the you know the real consequences of our everyday lives not to mention and then I'm going to mention why do people say not to mention then you know I'm going to mention you know that they're going to mention it it's so meaningless but um the uh just the toxic exposure in the forms of air pollution now that there's so much smoke and people think well air pollution is bad sure but it's the Unseen you know these pm2.5 particles that are ubiquitous now around us so much worse with fire smoke that is not really part of what our physiology is geared for so I think it's really there's a lot to be said about you know Lauren cordain's original work in terms of the paleo diet that we're trying to live a life that in gets back into sync with our genetics and uh you know certainly understanding chronobiology circadian rhythms the role of melatonin as you have so wonderfully elucidated I think this is really a centerpiece and and it is relatively easy to get back on track as it relates to this one very important piece of the puzzle and that is establishing a better dial chronobiology via understanding melatonin so thank you very much oh it's been a delight thanks for all of your great questions and your comments it's been fun always good to see you and uh I will not see you in Seattle in a couple of weeks I just got home from that area but I hope to see you I'll see you in February I'm sure in New York sounds great all right wonderful thanks so much take care bye bye bye now great see you well more and Enlightenment isn't it on the the use uh safety considerations uh as we might use melatonin becoming an Ever popular uh ever more popular supplement these days I hope you found this information uh interesting and certainly helpful uh as it relates to your choice in using melatonin or not uh in your supplement protocol I'm Dr David permet thanks for joining me here on the empowering neurologist and we'll be back soon bye for now [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: DavidPerlmutterMD

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Keywords: david perlmutter, dr. david perlmutter, grain brain, dr. perlmutter, brain maker

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Length: 58min 36sec (3516 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2023