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“Is melatonin bad for you?” is the most common question I get whenever I suggest melatonin.
They’ve heard on a podcast (or read on a blog) the dangers of melatonin.
And how you can become addicted to melatonin, wrecking your own body’s ability to produce it if you take melatonin supplements.
I totally understand the concern – no one wants to shut down their own melatonin production.
If you’ve been convinced that this melatonin side effect is real – you’ve been duped.
And in today’s episode, you’ll discover WHY this claim is not only false, but physically impossible.
For everyone wondering “is melatonin bad for you?,” you’re about to discover why melatonin is so powerful and much more than just a sleep aid. Its potential for regulating your body goes far beyond sleep given that it’s produced in your skin and your gut.
My guest today – Dr. Deanna Minich – has extensively studied melatonin to uncover its hidden potential to transform your health.
Deanna Minich, PhD, is a nutrition scientist, educator, and author, with over twenty years of experience in academia and in the natural product industries, currently serving as Chief Science Officer at Symphony Natural Health. She has been active as a functional medicine clinician in clinical trials and in her own practice (Food & Spirit™).
She is the author of six books on wellness topics, four book chapters, and over fifty scientific publications. Through her talks, workshops, groups, and in-person retreats, she helps people to transform their lives practically and artfully through nutrition and lifestyle.
Today we’ll cover a lot of ground so you can get the full picture of melatonin benefits!
Let’s dive in!
Or, listen on your favorite app: iTunes (Apple Podcasts) | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | Subscribe on Android
In This Episode:
- What melatonin is and how it’s produced in the body
- Surprising discovery of melatonin in 1958
- Melatonin as a potent antioxidant
- How melatonin supports brain detox during sleep (impacting neurodegenerative diseases risk)
- Melatonin role in gut health, immune function, and mitochondria health
- Is melatonin bad for you and can melatonin supplements be addictive?
- Is melatonin in pregnancy safe?
- Melatonin dosing tips
- What foods naturally contain melatonin?
Quotes
“Melatonin is not just a sleep molecule—it’s an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective powerhouse.” – Dr. Deanna Minich
“One molecule of melatonin can quench up to 10 free radicals, making it more potent than vitamin C as an antioxidant.” – Dr. Deanna Minich
Links
Find Dr. Minich online | Instagram | Facebook
Healthy Skin Show ep. 105: Can Melatonin Help Itchy Skin (So You Can Sleep)?
375: Is Melatonin Bad For You? (Plus, Melatonin Benefits, Dosing + Side Effects) w/ Dr. Deanna Minich {FULL TRANSCRIPT}
Jennifer Fugo (00:20.333)
Dr. Deanna, it is so great to have you here on the show. I know this took a lot of gymnastics to make our schedules work, but I'm so excited to have you here today on the Healthy Skin Show so thanks for joining us.
Deanna Minich, PhD (00:34.944)
Well, thank you for the invitation and for your patience with getting our schedules aligned. But I do think that this is the perfect time, so I always like to trust that.
Jennifer Fugo (00:44.921)
Perfect. Well, I wanted to talk about melatonin because I feel like it is so controversial. There are so many opinions online that you can read, and clients and community members are like, I don't know. Is melatonin bad for you? Is it addictive? I heard you shouldn't take it. I heard it's toxic. I mean, there are so many opinions out there. And yet I think fundamentally, we get lost in the weeds of everyone's opinions and not going back to like, what is this? And I love the fact that you've had some really great research come out and you've done some really amazing series on melatonin, so I thought you were the right person to ask. So for everyone who's heard of melatonin, what exactly is it in terms of how it functions in the body, and where does it come from?
Deanna Minich, PhD (01:36.682)
That's a really good place to start. So melatonin, if you just break apart the word, and I think that you'll like this since your field is skin, the initial discovery of melatonin was made by a dermatologist in 1958. His name was Aaron Lerner, he was a Yale-trained dermatologist, and what he was looking for was a skin whitening agent. And he had found some medical literature going back to 1917 around how the pineal gland of animals, when it was in water where there were frogs, it lightened their skin. So he thought that perhaps this substance from the pineal gland could lighten the skin. But what he soon came to find out was that it did not have that effect. But originally it was referred to as mela, which would connect to the skin, and the tonin part came because it had a structure or it was thought to be related to serotonin. And we know of serotonin as a neurotransmitter, and actually that did come to fruition that serotonin does convert to melatonin.
So when we just look at the actual chemical molecule, what we see is that it is referred to as a neurohormone. In chemical terms, it's a tryptamine. It is released from the pineal gland in response to darkness, and that is the true circadian aspect of melatonin, and the part where everybody gets connected into melatonin as a compound or a molecule for sleep. And I think that that's where melatonin has been pigeonholed for the large majority, whether you see it in the media or you see it on social media, that's kind of how melatonin has been talked about. But actually, melatonin is produced throughout the body. We find it in the brain, the retina, the skin, the liver, the kidneys, the thyroid, the entire reproductive system, even different aspects of the immune system. And because it's fat soluble and water soluble, it is found in the blood, it's found in the cerebrospinal fluid, it's found in saliva, it's found in the urine, it's in breast milk. And so it's throughout the body, it is ubiquitous, it's everywhere. It's also in plants. Even though plants don't have a pineal gland, they still produce melatonin. And melatonin in plants serves as a growth factor, it actually helps the plant to make more in the way of things like phytonutrients.
So it has a lot of applications, and I think that, again, what has happened in health, and even to some extent medicine, is that for a large majority of certain compounds, they tend to get pigeonholed or categorized in one application or one function. And the beauty of melatonin is that it's a multitasking molecule, it's actually doing a lot of different things. And I know we're going to unpack that a bit, but I think that that's where there has been a lack of appreciation or recognition based on the lineage of science around melatonin.
Jennifer Fugo (05:07.973)
And one really interesting thing that I think in the last, we'll say, fourish years because of going through lockdowns and such, what we came to learn, I think melatonin just like, people became more interested in melatonin in the more recent years, I would say for different reasons. But one of the cool things about it is that it has, at least from what I've read, antioxidant properties to it. Is that correct?
Deanna Minich, PhD (05:38.624)
It does. It does have antioxidant properties, in fact, one molecule of melatonin can quench up to 10 free radicals. Which is actually quite unique, because something like vitamin C, which is also an antioxidant, can quench something on the order of one to two radicals. So melatonin and all of its metabolites have been shown to have antioxidant and even antitoxin properties, which shows that melatonin has a role in detoxification or at least being helpful for any kind of toxin exposure. Although there's most likely more research to be done in that realm.
Jennifer Fugo (06:22.487)
So I think if anyone thinks this is just to help you sleep, you're going to find this conversation very surprising and enlightening because like you said, it is ubiquitous throughout the body. It's really truly amazing. And so, in functional medicine, we talk a lot about leaky gut, in my world, we talk about leaky skin. And what was fascinating to me was this piece of research that I saw you posted on LinkedIn that talked about leaky brain, and the connection between melatonin and leaky brain. So can you just kind of describe to everyone what does the term leaky brain even mean? And then what is melatonin's kind of relationship with it, so to speak, that we know at this point in time?
Deanna Minich, PhD (07:12.844)
Wow, you're just diving in. This is like the most exciting part of melatonin. So brain, brain health in general. And this is a connection with sleep actually, so I'm going to be connecting these dots. So it has been shown that when we sleep, there is, I would say, an expansion of the ability of the brain to remove substances. So if you look at the glial cells, which are part of the brain, they're very much connected to the immune system. The glial cells, they have a fluid around them called the glymphatic fluid. So the glial cells, the lymphatic fluid, you see this liquid. And at night, what ends up happening is, and this only happens when we're sleeping or under anesthesia, it doesn't happen in the waking state and we don't tend to be under anesthesia so that's not happening. But when we're sleeping, especially during slow-wave sleep, what ends up happening is that the brain has to clear itself.
And Dr. Russell Reiter, one of the melatonin, I would say, experts, talks about this as brainwashing. That, much like other organs in the body where we detoxify them, whether it's the liver, the gut, the skin, the lungs, the kidneys, the brain needs a chance to do that as well. But because during the day we are so busy and so active, we don't really have the opportunity. And so physiologically speaking, this happens at night and what ends up happening is that melatonin seems to be part of that waste removal. So that glymphatic fluid, which is circulating amongst the glial cells when the waste is deposited into that, and it is thought that melatonin is very integral for that process, especially because it's what we call amphiphilic. It's fat soluble, water soluble, so it can go from matrix to matrix. So the melatonin helps with the removal of things like toxic amyloid proteins, tau proteins, and then that moves through the body. So that's why, you know, if we're not sleeping well, in part, we can just wake up with a fuzzy brain, we kind of have that brain fog. It's like we didn't do our brain clearance. And the other thing, if you look longer term, chronically, if we have poor sleep, what can happen is we start to set the stage for dementia and neurodegenerative type of conditions. So we start to increase the risk for those conditions. And so that's why healthy sleep, healthy quality sleep, and making sure that we have enough sleep is related to that brain clearance.
Now that's an important piece because if we think of melatonin being what opens the sleep gate, it lowers our core body temperature, it enables us to reduce sleep latency or the time that it takes to fall asleep. But then melatonin starts to rise between 2 to 4 a.m., so we get a peak. So as it becomes dim outside, and I know you and I were laughing because it's bright on the inside right now because we're both in our evening time, but it is dim outside, and so if we did not have artificial light, our melatonin would be going up, up, up, up and then eventually we get to that peak between two and four. That's also seemingly the peak that we see antioxidant activity. So things like superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase. And we also know that melatonin is neuroprotective. It may actually work not only as part of the brain clearance, but as part of helping to grow healthy nerve cells. It may also help to decrease the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, and that has been shown in things like preclinical studies. So in that way, melatonin is facilitating that process. It's anti-inflammatory. And I like what you said, Jennifer, about why did melatonin come into our awareness during the pandemic, right? So one of the things that people noticed was that it was able to quell the cytokine storm. So it does have anti-inflammatory properties.
So if we start thinking about all the things happening at night and how to facilitate healthy sleep, because of its other characteristics in addition to opening the sleep gate, melatonin would seem to be a very efficient and effective molecule. So I think that that's kind of exciting because from the standpoint of being an antioxidant that does reside in the brain and also throughout tissues, it's an antioxidant, it's anti-inflammatory, helps to clear the brain. It is in concert with antioxidant defense systems of the body. It also helps to stimulate and modulate the immune system, as well as regulate mitochondrial health. And we know that mitochondrial health is truly the pivot point to so many different types of chronic conditions. Either we have healthy mitochondria and we have lots of energy and we're functioning well, or we have mitochondrial poisoning through increased environmental toxins or just even through increased free radical generation and oxidative stress. So what's fascinating is that one of the highest concentrations of melatonin, just from a cellular perspective, and we're not talking from the pineal gland, but from a cell perspective, even in the skin, is in the mitochondria. So I just feel like all of those functions are essential for so many different reasons. And so that's why when we think about root causes in functional medicine, I can see melatonin hitting on a number of those different root causes.
Jennifer Fugo (13:00.961)
That is fascinating. I am curious, and I don't know if you know the answer to this, but as you were talking and you mentioned this concern that long-term, like the protective role that melatonin plays on the brain, helps us prevent neurodegenerative disease potentially, the potentials to help maybe with avoiding Alzheimer's, etc. Do you have any thoughts on, or have you come across any research about, within my community, a lot of people are exposed to antihistamine medications, things like montelukast, which does have some concerns of how it impacts the brain, can potentially increase the risk of memory issues long-term, etc. The same with Benadryl. Do you know if there's any potential interaction or connection between those? I just thought I would ask.
Deanna Minich, PhD (14:16.856)
There could be. Melatonin, because it does go through the cytochrome P450 system in the liver, it can interact with medications. So rather than say specifically about that class, I would say that somebody should actually consult with a practitioner if they're taking any medications. So if that drug goes through cytochrome 1A2, that's the majority, that's where melatonin is primarily metabolized, but any drug that's going through that particular pathway or others. And you know, we're all very individualized, some of us metabolize medications very easily, we’re fast metabolizers or we're slow metabolizers.
Jennifer Fugo (14:57.132)
So true.
Deanna Minich, PhD (15:23.53)
So I can't speak to antihistamines specifically, but I would definitely caution people to just consult with their practitioner, consult with your pharmacist about any kind of interactions. And in some cases what melatonin is doing is not just interacting from the standpoint of the liver enzyme, but it's actually reducing the need for some of those medications. So you may not even need as much, and what can happen, let's just take in the case of antihypertensive drugs. If somebody is taking one of the very common blood pressure lowering medications, it could reduce blood pressure even more, and then that could give people low blood pressure. Now in some cases, depending on the drug and depending on the person, there can even be an increase in blood pressure. So there's a lot of nuance there, so it's not an easy answer of a yes or no, it's a possible and definitely for people to check that out if they are on those meds.
Jennifer Fugo (16:10.437)
Yeah, and I also want to just add to that too, and I again put a reference for everyone in the show notes about this, you do have to be careful if you're taking SSRI, antidepressant medications, if you're supplementing with tryptophan or 5-HTP. Any thoughts on melatonin in pregnancy or breastfeeding in terms of whether melatonin is safe or not?
Deanna Minich, PhD (16:21.548)
Yeah, and again, so much depends on the dose. And if we're talking here about low dose, physiologic levels of melatonin that have been tested, I would say from a pregnancy standpoint, there has been some rethinking about that. I think during pregnancy so many women have hesitation, and rightly so, about taking anything, even herbs. So this is another one of those cases where they should definitely check with their healthcare practitioner. But in general, what I have heard people say, practitioners and also people that have studied melatonin for decades, is that it may actually be helpful during pregnancy. Now again, that will depend on the person.
As far as breastfeeding, however, let's just get into that one because this is one that I just realized that many people, they're not aware of this. So being that melatonin is in breast milk, and it would be reflective of the mother's melatonin levels, what we see with infants is that they have a very gradual incline in their own endogenous melatonin levels. So they start to increase in their melatonin between like three months to 12 months, they start to ramp up. And what you tend to see during that time is that their sleep is disturbed or they're not sleeping regularly for some babies. So what the mother can do is, if she is nursing, she can pump breast milk or feed the baby at night when her melatonin would naturally be high so that the baby is getting those levels of melatonin.
There was one study that I can recall, and this was an animal study, but they did find that the maternal melatonin was helping to shape the offspring's gut microbiome. So it wasn't only just having this potential sleep effect, but also perhaps modulating the gut microbiome. And we know that most of the melatonin in the body is actually produced in the gut, similar to other types of compounds like serotonin, dopamine, we tend to see that anyway. So I would say that that might be something to try is to nurse the infant in the evening hours when melatonin is high, to help with things like colic and just getting to sleep with more ease. And you don't find melatonin added to infant formula, by the way. So you won't find it, it's not something that is added. So it would be interesting to do a study to look at formula-fed infants versus breastfed infants, and also breastfed within a certain circadian rhythm with attentiveness to that, to see if there would be a difference in their sleep, their behavior, any kind of colic or gut issues, and I bet that there would be, just based on what we know about melatonin.
Jennifer Fugo (19:41.166)
Wow, that is fascinating. Oh my goodness, I love that idea. Well, so back to your point about the production in the gut, because I was just going to ask you about that. I also, I think I remember from grad school, we talked about how there's this very high level of serotonin production, I believe, in the GI tract. So is that part of the connection of why we have so much production of melatonin in the gut, and are there specific roles that it plays in the GI tract?
Deanna Minich, PhD (20:15.582)
Yeah, thank you for that question. That's really good because we talked about the many different functions of melatonin, and the functions of melatonin correspond to different organ systems. So let's go through that, because the way I think of it is that there is pineal gland-made melatonin.
Jennifer Fugo (20:33.607)
And that's from your brain.
Deanna Minich, PhD (20:44.162)
So in other words, in the middle of your head, yeah, you've got this little gland, it's right in the middle of the head. And that gland, when it's triggered by, basically you're looking for the absence of blue light, which would be taken up by the eyes, by the certain cells in the retina, that then transmits to this master clock in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. So that is a cluster of like 10 to 20,000 neurons. Then that suprachiasmatic nucleus eventually transmits to the pineal gland and says, it's dark, it's time to send the circadian signal to the peripheral clock system within every cell of the body. So what ends up happening is that the pineal gland takes tryptophan, goes to serotonin, goes to melatonin. That melatonin goes through the body, through the systemic circulation, through the cerebrospinal fluid, and synchronizes the peripheral clocks.
So that would be the cells of the human body, right? So making sure that the liver is synchronized to the kidney, is synchronized to the muscle, like all of them are playing the same symphony. Nobody's out of tune. But that's just pineal gland-made of melatonin. And that only happens in darkness and at the pinnacle of darkness. The pineal gland on average, depending on the person and their age, they would make somewhere between 0.1 to 1 milligram. And as children begin to develop, they actually have the highest amounts of melatonin that they produce endogenously. So they're up at that 0.9 to 1 milligram, whereas through life, as we get older, that goes down, down, down, down, down. And then eventually your pineal gland is not as responsive and you need to be even more cautious, even if you have light eyes. So if you have light colored eyes, you're even more susceptible to the suppression of melatonin synthesis from exposure to blue light at night. So when you get older, it's even more important to be wearing those blue light blocking glasses, to be attentive to your light and dark. I think with children they can get away with it a little bit more because their melatonin is higher, but then as we get older we are going to be more vulnerable.
The other kind of melatonin that's made is what is called the extrapineal, or just think of it as the non-pineal melatonin, which is the kind of melatonin that's made in other cells of the body, whether it's the skin, again the gut, so this is where the gut falls into that. This kind of melatonin, it's the same compound, but its function is different. So what we see is that there is less of an endocrine effect. So when we think endocrine, that's typically hormone, and the pineal gland is an endocrine gland. And when the pineal gland is producing melatonin, that's considered endocrine because it's made in a gland and goes somewhere else in the body for activity.
With things like the gut or the skin what is happening is that this is called autocrine or paracrine, which means that it's produced in the cell to be used by that cell, or in neighboring cells, or in cells within that local area. So it's kind of like, within the gut, the gut is not as responsive like the pineal gland is to that light and dark through the eyes. The gut is going to be, I think that we still need to uncover a lot about the workings of the gut melatonin, but I do think it's more in response to meals. And also what we see is that melatonin is made in every segment of the digestive tract, so from the esophagus to the rectum. And we see that it could have a role in things like the immune system, which is in the gut, 60 to 70% of our immune system is in the gut, it's in an area called the gut-associated lymphoid tissue, the GALT. The melatonin may also be playing a role in gastric secretions and the gut microbiome, and also the motility of the gut.
So again, melatonin as this multitasking molecule is very integral in so many parts of our bodies. So in the gut, it's going to have a different role than it will have at night when our pineal gland is producing it in order to send that circadian signal. And that's where more of your interest is, when you were asking about the antioxidant effect, the mitochondrial effect. That's more from the extrapineal or the non-pineal melatonin. So that would tie into skin because many people think, my skin, I'm sitting and being exposed to infrared light, I am supercharging my mitochondria, and I'm causing the production of melatonin. And yes, definitely near-infrared and infrared light can be good for that, but that's a different functionality in some ways. There can be some overlap in terms of helping each other, but when we are using light through the skin, that tends to be a different functionality of melatonin. So that's going to supercharge mitochondria in the skin and perhaps even a bit locally, but what we're differentiating, again, is pineal versus the rest of the body and how they are a bit distinct and different.
Jennifer Fugo (26:25.709)
So one thing you mentioned I thought was interesting, and I jotted this down, you said that the body produces generally 0.1 to 1 milligram of melatonin, and yet you see supplements that are like 3 milligrams, 5 milligrams. And then you have a lot of people who will say, I don't like melatonin side effects, it makes me feel really woozy in the morning, I wake up and I feel like I'm in a fog. So how do we make this make sense, in terms of what we should have fo dosage of melatonin versus what we're seeing on the market in supplements?
Deanna Minich, PhD (27:11.128)
That's really the pivotal question, right? Because you're absolutely spot on that everybody seems to have a different response to melatonin. And some of that could be because of the dose, that it's overshooting what we need, so then we get this lethargy or we have some kind of, like our body hasn't metabolized it by the morning, so we are still feeling like our circadian signal is not set or it's been delayed.
The other thing is our personalized kinetics, because melatonin, when we take it supplementally, it does go through that cytochrome 1A2. It's very similar to caffeine. So let me give you an example. For some people who drink coffee, they have no issue with going to bed. They're completely fine, they're fast metabolizers of caffeine. Those same people should take melatonin closer in to bedtime because they're going to be a fast metabolizer. So for those people sometimes they may need, if we're looking at the physiologic dose, they may need to ramp it up a little bit in order to make sure that they're not so fast where they're exhausting their melatonin at 3 a.m. and waking up. So kind of having that natural release.
Now, other people, my husband is like this, because I'm always singing the praises of melatonin so he started taking it, and he was waking up groggy, one of the melatonin side effects, even at a low dose, a 0.3 milligram physiologic dose, which would be appropriate for his age. So then I recommended that he back it out. Back it out, because his body will take longer to metabolize melatonin. He is a slower metabolizer of melatonin. So he's somebody where he has morning coffee, and never another point in the day is he having coffee.
Jennifer Fugo (29:07.911)
Never. No caffeine.
Deanna Minich, PhD (29:10.36)
So you have to consider that, you have to consider a person's age, where they're at. So if somebody is in their 50s, they're getting close to bottoming out. If they're in their 60s, even more so. But if you're middle-aged, like if you're more like in your 35, 40 range, looking at replenishing and having something like 0.3 milligrams. I think the basic premise with any kind, if we're just talking an endocrine type of function here, is to start slow and go low. And you might find you start with 0.3 milligrams, and then you're finding, I think I need a little bit more. So then you go to 0.6, and you kind of figure out where your sweet spot is based on the timing that you take it, your personalized kinetics, and the dose. And I think that because there are all these sleep products out there with really high doses, some of them have sugar in them because they're gummies, others of them may have other herbs that may influence the cytochrome activity or the metabolism of melatonin, you might even be expediting the metabolism or you might be slowering, slowing it, depending on what else is in that sleep supplement.
Jennifer Fugo (30:31.381)
I do like slowering. We're slowly lowering. I like that. We're slowering the dose and the effect.
Deanna Minich, PhD (30:39.882)
Yes, I was putting those together. And the other thing too is I think that more is not always better when it comes to melatonin because again, it's kind of the Goldilocks principle. Not too little, for some of us, and not too much where we saturate the receptors and then don't get a response, or we get this delayed feeling like we can't wake up fully because we're still programmed into our peripheral clocks. So we have to find our Goldilocks. Everybody has a different just right, and so you have to find what that is for you.
And one other thing I do want to mention, because this is not widely known, is that some of the synthetically-derived melatonins, so let me just step back because what ended up happening, after Dr. Lerner discovered melatonin in 1958, there was more exploration into the pineal gland. So a lot more was done on the pineal gland of animals and then extracting the pineal gland, extracting the melatonin, which would be very inefficient as you can imagine, especially because it's such a small amount produced at a certain time of day, and then you have the whole issue with prions and viruses or just anything where the animal has some kind of issue, and then it's just not efficient. So what ended up happening was that there was then this synthetic production of melatonin through a chemically-derived process that was very inexpensive and it could be patented. So you could actually create a chemical flow to get you to a certain dose of melatonin. So that became very popular, and there were certain constraints around how much of a dose could be given because it was owned by a certain patent holder. There are certain substrates that initially start that cascade of making melatonin, some of them are petrochemical based. There are at least two articles that I have seen where they talk about contaminants that can occur from that chemical process whereby melatonin is synthesized. So that's just something to note as well.
And I know that there have been some labeling concerns about the amount of melatonin in the supplement not matching what is on the label, and either having too little or way too much. And this whole thing with kids taking gummies, melatonin gummies, to get them to go to sleep. I just don't think that number one, gummies is a very good substrate or delivery system because you have the sugar, you've got this hygroscopic matrix so you've got something very moist, and so you could have interactions within that particular matrix. And I just don't like the idea of the gummies, the teeth, the whole. I mean, there are good gummies out there, and I know people have pill fatigue, so they're looking for other ideas, but giving kids gummies before bedtime like that (melatonin for kids), I just don't know if that is really the best way to do it. And especially because children have the highest levels of endogenous melatonin that they're going to have their whole lives. From a pineal perspective, they should be at their optimum level, unless, of course, they're sitting on their screens at night, they're scrolling, they're on their devices, they're at sporting events with artificial lights, they're in the grocery stores with artificial lights. I think that there is just so much electricity and while we've become more productive, we've also become more endocrine disruptive and this is happening with children.
So I think when it comes to kids, unless the child has an indication whereby you would bring in melatonin supplementally, so something like ADHD or autistic spectrum disorder, there can be some nuance and certain conditions where you might want to bring it in, but for the most part, sleep hygiene, with children. Darkness deficiency, most people have darkness deficiency. I know even my niece, she's afraid of the dark. She's 10 years old and she's been like this for many years, so she sleeps with all these lights on. She sleeps the night light and then a little light over there. And I'm just thinking, I know that you want to create more of a safe environment and make sure that the child feels good about being in their beds, but in general, all of that electricity can be disruptive to sleep. So you have to find a happy balance. What gives the child peace of mind and gives them a feeling of being just ready for sleep, and then, where is it disruptive? How close to bedtime are they on screens? Recently I just saw this equation which I thought was good. It was 10-3-2-1. Have you seen this?
Jennifer Fugo (35:28.273)
No.
Deanna Minich, PhD (35:28.896)
Well, let me see if I can get it right. It was in order to have good, healthy sleep, don't have any caffeine 10 hours before going to bed, so that's the 10. And then three hours before bedtime, stop eating, or at least curtail eating. Two hours before bedtime, stop working, and that means like being off computers. And then one hour before bedtime, start to be in the mode of creating your sleep ritual. Whether you're taking a bath, you're winding down, you’re journaling, soft light, that's the time that most people would be taking their melatonin, unless, again, they are a very slow metabolizer, in which case they might have to take it three hours before bedtime. So that's kind of like the 10-3-2-1, that might be just a general way to think about this, but then you personalize it based on what you know about yourself.
Jennifer Fugo (36:50.459)
And I wanted to ask quickly, because I think this is an interesting question. We've talked about when to take melatonin based on whether you're this fast metabolizer, slow metabolizer, and obviously caffeine is a really easy way for people to kind of self-select in a sense. But what about, there's a lot of supplements that contain melatonin from the antioxidant perspective that may be taken during the day. If you have a supplement and for some reason, I don't know, are there uses of melatonin supplementally if we're in full sunlight during the day, or is that generally from your research not a good idea to get melatonin benefits?
Deanna Minich, PhD (37:32.654)
There's not a lot of research on taking it during the day. Now, anecdotally, I do know of people that do take it during the day, and they override any kind of sleepy effect that they get from it. There can be reasons to take it during the day, like, let's just say, in shift work. So for people who do shift work, who they actually have to reprogram their circadian signal, there can be a way to do that. There's kind of, I would say, mixed views about that. And we also know that in some individuals melatonin can can change the dynamics of insulin, so you can see some changes in insulin sensitivity or just in general.
So it's thought that melatonin is probably best taken as it starts to get dark, that that would be the optimum time to take it. But I do know people who do take it during the day, they take a higher dose for that antioxidant benefit. As far as that being detrimental, I don't see it being detrimental outside of if you're operating heavy machinery, or driving a car, and you get sleepy from the melatonin, that could be an issue.
Jennifer Fugo (38:47.747)
This question I see all over the place and I've been asked so many times. Is taking melatonin supplementally addictive and is melatonin bad for you, in that if you take it, your body will just go, you know, I don't need to make any of my own melatonin. Have you actually seen there to be any proof of that?
Deanna Minich, PhD (39:08.898)
That is the number one question that I get. I almost thought you were going to ask that. There is no scientific study that prospectively or proactively looked at that research question and found that the body stops making its own endogenous melatonin. And also, if you think of it, as we get older and we make less and less and less, even if you were stopping your endogenous production, which we don't think people are because there are at least four to five different studies that would suggest that you're not doing that, you don't have a lot by a certain age anyway.
And then the other thing is that I do think we might be able to even stimulate, there are different views on this, but this could even prime the mitochondria to make more melatonin, which would be a good thing from the aspect of the mitochondria. There's not human data on that yet, but a few of the melatonin researchers I talked with suggest that it could stimulate mitochondrial synthesis of melatonin, to take it. So that would fulfill, and hopefully be good, as far as the antioxidant aspects. But no, nothing from the pineal gland where you're stopping the body from making your own melatonin.
Jennifer Fugo (40:39.087)
Oh my gosh, thank you.
Deanna Minich, PhD (40:40.812)
It's a good question. It doesn't follow the same, I think that the rationale for the question is good. I think that people are, when they put melatonin into the box of a hormone and only a hormone, that is how hormones work. So estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, they work through negative feedback. So they work within this brain loop. So from the brain to the endocrine gland, there's typically some kind of precursor or the brain sends a signal to the gland to produce that hormone. When the level is higher, then there's feedback back to the brain to turn off that signal. We don't have that same negative feedback system with melatonin. It's very specific. It's like, we have it every day at the time of darkness, and so we don't have that same issue. So that's why I don't see melatonin as just, it does fill the box for the neurohormone aspect of circadian rhythm, but it doesn't work like other hormones. Other hormones aren't necessarily amphiphilic antioxidants like melatonin. They're not mitochondrial regulators like melatonin.
It's almost like melatonin in some ways is more like vitamin D than like another hormone. Vitamin D we used to think was a vitamin, right? And then we soon learned that it has hormone-like properties, but it does fill the category of being a vitamin, like we have a need for it Or some people say we don't have a need for it because we have our skin, we have the precursor vitamin D, as long as we have exposure to ultraviolet light, there are different ways to look at that. But basically I think that vitamin D and melatonin, they're kind of like brother and sister. I would call them circadian nutrients, and they even have some overlap in their functionality. When I think of vitamin D, I think of sunlight, when I think of melatonin I think of darkness. So they're very complimentary in that way, they're kind of like a seesaw. And in fact, there was even a study that showed that vitamin D levels were connected to melatonin status. So when vitamin D levels were low, melatonin was low. When vitamin D levels were improved, melatonin improved. So those two are very interconnected.
And even if we think of their functions with the immune system, and when you mentioned before about the pandemic, or 2020, when people started to use melatonin for not just sleep, but then also for the immune system, there was kind of this connection between vitamin D and melatonin in that way. And they're both, I'm just gonna draw it back to your field with skin, they're both connected into the skin. In fact, when you're thinking about, well, what is on the frontier for melatonin? I think that as we look at the field of longevity, so I've been interviewed on different people's podcasts like yours, and sometimes they're on longevity or biohacking. To me, vitamin D, melatonin, I think about this duo as something very important for just our longevity toolkit, I think about there is some initial research on melatonin and hair growth. Maybe in the future we're looking at the role of melatonin and the mitochondria in a much more, I don't know, it's role a little bit even more in things like brain health and dementia. Already there's a lot of literature there, but perhaps even more, perhaps even more.
Dr. Russell Reiter who I interviewed, and I would consider him the world's expert in melatonin research, he talks a lot about neurodegeneration. And if we could just even have melatonin throughout our lives and be taking that decade after decade, could we actually prevent a lot of these different conditions? And melatonin doesn't cost all that much, it's pretty modest, and I think it's something that we just need to be thinking about all of its many different uses and what we could see going forward in the future.
Jennifer Fugo (45:14.701)
Yeah.
Deanna Minich, PhD (45:24.072)
I see it, if you were to ask me separately about what I find really interesting, I look at melatonin as a molecule of consciousness. I see it actually as a spiritual molecule. So when I think of the pineal gland, if you look at Rene Descartes back in the 15th, 16th century, he was a philosopher, a mathematician, and he saw the pineal gland as the seat of the soul. So there's this kind of, it's very mysterious how it connects to light and dark, and even states of consciousness, you start to see changes in melatonin levels for people with traumatic brain injury.
Or even, why do people talk about the dream state being heightened when they take melatonin? What is happening to our state of conscious awareness? Because you have tryptophan, which goes to serotonin. We know that serotonin has perhaps more of this psychoactive or this brain-modulating effect, especially as it relates to our mood state, and then you have that conversion to melatonin. So it just feels like there's something really interesting there. In fact, I'm going to be presenting on this next year at a conference, talking about melatonin as a molecule of consciousness. Even when we meditate, when people are long-term meditators, they have higher levels naturally of melatonin compared to people who don't meditate.
Jennifer Fugo (46:43.162)
Wow, how interesting. This is why I wanted to have this conversation, because there's so much fear mongering asking is melatonin bad for you, and I think there’s not enough of this other side of the conversation about how wonderful and amazing it could be, and it is, for the body. I've even argued with clients because this was something I've been curious about for so long, because a lot of people in my community who are struggling with skin issues, a lot of times they get stuck at night not being able to sleep because they're so itchy, they're so uncomfortable depending on the severity of their condition, that when sleep is disrupted, my thought was, and I had actually talked with a variety of hormone doctors about this, I said, isn't it better to just get sleep? Like all this talk about melatonin being addictive, I mean, if we weigh the two, even if it was, but clearly it's not, you're saying the studies don't show that this is an addictive thing that suppresses your body's ability. So you just don't sleep?
To me that didn't make any sense. I thought, isn't it better if we can, with whatever tools we need to, to facilitate this rest, this cleanup state, as you described in the beginning of this conversation, to allow the body the opportunity the next morning to be at least as ready to go as it possibly could be? And that's just the sleep piece. And now you share with us too that it helps your mitochondria, which are the power plants of our cells, it does all of these other amazing things. So I hope that this conversation invites people to reconsider whatever preconceived notion that they have that potentially made them wonder “is melatonin bad for you”, that in some way it's a bad thing. I mean, not in every country is it available.
Deanna Minich, PhD (48:52.268)
Right.
Jennifer Fugo (49:01.377)
In the UK, you have to have a prescription, which is so interesting, because here in the US, you can buy it anywhere. I do want to make sure because you are, like every single talk I've seen you give, you always know about colors and foods and antioxidants and phytonutrients. I did want to just circle back quickly to the foods that potentially contain melatonin, or can help us maybe produce melatonin. Can you just mention some of those? Because I don't want everyone to just be like, supplements. I think there's some other great ways that we can potentially incorporate this from maybe a food perspective.
Deanna Minich, PhD (49:34.988)
Yeah. So melatonin is found in plants. It's found in animal foods as well, but it is more commonly found in plant foods, like the reproductive portion of plants, things like nuts and seeds. So that's why when people say pistachios or walnuts, or if we think of fruit, cherries, let's have some cherries to get melatonin. It's almost like there are other neurotransmitters, other are molecules and compounds that we find in food. We find dopamine in food, we find serotonin in food. So there is melatonin in foods, there's no doubt about it. There's a whole list, if we're having plants in our diet, chances are we're taking in melatonin. It can vary a lot depending on cultivars, how it's grown, is it dried, how is it processed, that kind of thing. And then also just even accessibility of the melatonin. And it won't be a standard amount in a plant food, right, because nature is organic. Nature is whatever the environment gives that plant and that interaction is what you're going to get. So it's not going to be a standardized dose.
But I have actually done some calculations to figure out, okay, let me just find out. So let's just take tart cherries, or just cherries in general. So what I did was I looked up some research to find out what was the range of melatonin that could be found in cherries? And of course, there are many different varieties of cherries, so I just had to take the middle of that range, and then I calculated how many cherries would you need in order to just get that low physiological dose, like 0.3 milligrams? So 0.3 milligrams of melatonin from cherries, how much would I need? And my calculation was like 2,700 fresh cherries in order to get 0.3 milligrams of melatonin, so it was a lot. Even pistachios, it was like something over 1,500 raw pistachios. So it was a lot.
But now what I would say about this too, is that these foods are also rich in antioxidants and rich in polyphenols. Like when I think of cherries, I think, wow, vitamin C, polyphenols, that would also be potentially chronobiotic in their effects and help with circadian rhythm when they're in season, but not to get melatonin per se in appreciable amounts. And especially if melatonin needs to be taken before bedtime for that circadian effect, you don't want to be eating a lot late at night, right?
Jennifer Fugo (52:32.572)
Yeah, not 2000 cherries. That's not gonna work.
Deanna Minich, PhD (52:49.952)
No, not 2,000 cherries. But it is important to get a number of these foods for the other compounds that they provide. The other thing that people would need to be sure that they have in their diets in order to make melatonin, so endogenously, now we're talking like for the cell and for the pineal gland to make melatonin, they actually need to be sure that they have enough tryptophan in their diet. So tryptophan is an amino acid, it's a building block of protein. So melatonin is made from tryptophan, and what's really unique about plants is that plants can make their own tryptophan. But in order to go from tryptophan to melatonin, we're talking about five different enzyme steps and some of those enzymes require cofactors like folate, iron, calcium, magnesium, we know how many people are short in magnesium. Some of those enzymes that are involved in that conversion, they have gene variants. So one of them is a methyltransferase and we know how many people have issues with methylation. So there could be less efficiency in the conversion of tryptophan to serotonin and then on to melatonin. And again, we're looking at about five different steps there.
But still, we want to be sure that we're frontloading the system by having tryptophan so that we at least have the precursor and our body can make it endogenously. Now, I just want to mention this too, since I did mention plants, I just want to mention this to everybody because it's very interesting. Synthetic melatonin was measured head-to-head with a plant melatonin. That plant melatonin is called Herbatonin. And what the researchers found, and they actually published this in the Molecules journal in 2021, was that the plant melatonin, even though the amount of melatonin was the same, the molecule looked the same, what they actually found was that the plant melatonin had an amplified activity. It had 646% greater anti-inflammatory activity.
Jennifer Fugo (54:51.455)
Wow.
Deanna Minich, PhD (55:07.126)
And this was done in a cell model, you know, certain actives to look at. It also had up to 470% greater free radical scavenging activity. So this particular plant melatonin, called Herbatonin, because it's not synthetic and it's not an extract, it's not like it's just the isolated melatonin, it's the plant matrix that it occurs within, and in some way that helps to potentiate the activity. So if you take 0.3 milligrams, you're actually getting six times that in terms of its anti-inflammatory activity. So you could be taking the lower dose, but from an activity perspective, a functional perspective, you're increasing it. You're heightening or amplifying that activity.
Jennifer Fugo (55:42.654)
Wow, that is so fascinating. Oh my goodness. I love that we went in so many different directions about this conversation because I feel like now anybody walking away from this is going to go, oh, everything I heard before, I can't go off of that anymore. I can't live with this idea that is melatonin bad for you and this horrible thing that's going to do me harm. Now granted, too much is probably not a good idea, right? We always want to think about what's that correct, right dose for you, as you had shared. But I really appreciate all of the information that you're bringing to light about melatonin, and all the work that you do in this space about the melatonin benefits of phytonutrients and how they can be applied within clinical nutrition and the healthcare space, and really helping people connect dots that I think sometimes we think is not that sexy and glamorous, but is so crucially important. And I love the fact that we can use food as medicine in this way. It's so beautiful.
I just want to thank you so much for being here, Dr. Deanna, and I hope that we can have you back sometime. And I invite everyone to check out your website because you have a lot of resources for people who may be interested. And it's at DeannaMinich.com, which we can link to in the show notes, as well as your social media profiles. But thank you so much for this. I love that you were so open to doing this deep dive into melatonin here to help support everyone to live their healthiest lives ever and get their skin in line, get their health in line, and try to get rid of the fear mongering that so many people have fallen prey to, unfortunately, over the last few years on social media around melatonin. So thank you so much.
Deanna Minich, PhD (57:39.814)
My pleasure. It's so good to dispel myths and misperceptions. And like you said, I think it's all about a balanced approach, and so just finding what that is, and working with a practitioner if you need to have more information. And by the way, I do work with a company called Symphony Natural Health who makes the Herbatonin, and they have a medical team. And people can access the medical team and call in if you have questions, and then they can guide you, and if your practitioner needs to have more information, they can supply that to you. So that's a resource if people need it.
Jennifer Fugo (58:19.18)
Thank you so much, and thank you for being here. I really appreciate you.
Deanna Minich, PhD (58:24.162)
Thanks for having me. It's been a fun conversation.
