From Dr. Lauren Deville - Naturopathic Doctor
Image by Belinda Cave from Pixabay
Most of us think of melatonin just as the sleep hormone produced by the pineal gland at night. It’s a fantastic antioxidant, and even decreases pain signaling. Yet there are limitations in how it can be dosed, since obviously we don’t want to fall asleep in the middle of the day.
However, the benefits of melatonin aren’t limited to the nighttime. In fact, the vast majority of your body’s melatonin doesn’t respond to the circadian clock at all… and it comes from inside of nearly every one of your cells.
Melatonin and Oxidative Stress The vast majority of oxidative stress in your body comes not from toxic exposures, but from inside your own mitochondria. Even healthy mitochondria aren’t perfectly efficient; a small percentage of the electrons that enter their electron transport chain will leak out into the surrounding cytosol, becoming oxidative stressors. Of course, the more of an energy mismatch you might have (consuming more calories than you burn), or the more toxic the mitochondria might be, the higher this percentage will become.
Because melatonin is such a powerful antioxidant, the mitochondria produce it locally, to deal with these locally produced free radicals.
Why melatonin, though? Why not, say, glutathione, or superoxide dismutase, or Vitamin C, or Vitamin E?
It turns out that melatonin orchestrates the release of a whole cascade of other antioxidants, helping to recycle glutathione so that it can do its job. It’s also amphiphilic, which means it’s both fat and water soluble, which gives it a lot of biochemical flexibility. Vitamin E is specifically lipophilic (having an affinity for fat-soluble environments), but melatonin is twice as powerful as Vitamin E even in a lipid-rich environment.
Because of all this, melatonin is protective against oxidative damage in a wide variety of tissues, including lipids, proteins, and in DNA.
Infrared Light and MelatoninThere are ways to increase the amount of melatonin that the mitochondria produce. One way in particular is with exposure to infrared light.
This may be the primary reason why red light therapy has been shown to improve mitochondrial function. Red light refers to the visible part of the spectrum, but infrared is usually included in most of those devices as well, and should have an even more powerful effect. Infrared saunas of course would fit here too.
Some of the minor natural ways to achieve infrared exposure is through fire, like candles and campfires. Incandescent light sources release some infrared light. (This is yet another reason, aside from the dirty electricity argument, to eschew LED and fluorescent “energy saving” lightbulbs for the older, incandescents… though these days you can basically only find them on Amazon.)
But the most robust way to get infrared exposure is through sunlight, as infrared is part of the sun’s natural spectrum. Sunlight helps the cells to make melatonin, and yet, it’s the very absence of light that triggers melatonin release from the pineal gland.
You need a steady supply of melatonin throughout the day, in other words–in the absence of infrared exposure from the sun, the body still needs melatonin to help quench free radicals.
So the sun causes your cells to produce their own melatonin, while the absence of the sun causes the pineal gland to release melatonin into the bloodstream, outside the cells. (How clever is that?)
Why Melatonin Levels (Subcellular or Otherwise) Might Be LowAside from not getting enough exposure to infrared light (which would apply to anyone spending too much time inside, particularly without windows, or swing shift workers, etc), there are a few other potential risk factors for low levels of melatonin as well.
Dysbiosis might play a role here, as the gut produces some 90% of serotonin, the primary precursor for melatonin. So if you’re struggling with gut health, or perhaps took a round of intense antibiotics, this could be an issue.
Zinc is also required to produce serotonin, so a deficiency in zinc would lead to low levels of serotonin, which would lead to low melatonin as well. Other required nutrients include folate, magnesium, and vitamin B6, so deficiencies in these would also result in lower melatonin levels too.
The UpshotMelatonin is about more than just sleep—it’s also critical for cellular and mitochondrial health. Bizarrely enough, one of the best ways to ensure adequate levels of melatonin, aside from making sure you’re getting adequate nutrition and your gut is healthy, is to get out into the sunshine.
Intracellular Melatonin