Melatonin is a natural body hormone that a lot of people take for granted. Having healthy melatonin levels can ensure a good night’s sleep which would otherwise lead to a series of health problems. Melatonin supplements can intervene in situations when the body isn’t capable of secreting enough melatonin on its own, and when you fully understand what can go wrong when you’re not sleeping, you will appreciate what melatonin has to offer at a whole new level.
Consequences of Sleep Deprivation
This topic is one of extreme importance because a lot of people think that nothing can go wrong when they skip a few hours of sleep. Regardless of what’s keeping you up at night, it’s important for your body to regenerate, because not getting enough sleep can cause major damage on the short and on the long term.
— Digestive & Obesity Problems
When you don’t get enough sleep, your body tends to be unable to assimilate fat and calories as it should, increasing your risk for obesity. Sleep deprivation has an impact on two hormones, ghrelin and leptin.
The latter is responsible for telling your brain you’ve had enough food for the time being. When you don’t get enough sleep, your leptin levels are lower and your ghrelin levels are higher, meaning that you feel the urge to eat more, despite having had enough.
— Immune System Suppressor
During your sleeping hours, the immune system works to make substances that can help fight off infections, which keep your body protected from different viruses and bacteria. Lack of sleep prevents the immune system from doing its job, thus leading to a weakening of the body, and rendering it unable to counterattacks a virus.
If you’ve ever had a severe case of the flu, the doctor most likely recommended that you get plenty of rest. That’s because, during rest, the immune system works to keep you healthy.
— Central Nervous System Issues
Have you ever slept so little, that you’ve woken up feeling anxious and moody, and that basically ruined your entire day? That’s because sleep deprivation impacts your central nervous system. And this happens in a lot of different ways:
- When you rest, there are certain pathways that create a connection between your neurons, helping you remember fresh bits of information. When you don’t sleep, the brain isn’t capable of storing information, making it more difficult for you to learn.
- The lack of sleep also has an impact on your emotional well-being. People who don’t sleep as much as they’re supposed to will experience a lot of mood swings, which can affect you and the people you interact with throughout the day.
- There are also situations where people who are deprived of sleep experience something called micro sleep. During micro sleep, people abruptly fall asleep for a few seconds, which is a completely involuntary reaction. Needless to say, this can be extremely dangerous in a lot of different scenarios, such as when you’re driving.
There are several things you can do in order to prevent sleep deprivation, such as:
- Avoid naps during the day.
- Refrain from consuming any caffeine-based drinks past noon.
- Avoid drinking too much alcohol (one glass per day can actually relax and make you feel sleepy, but large quantities of alcohol will decrease the quality of your sleep, and also make you fall asleep harder).
- Steer clear from heavy meals two to three hours before bedtime.
- Avoid exercising right before you go to bed. It’s better if you take on more relaxing activities, like taking a warm bath, reading a book, or listening to some music.
- Take melatonin supplements if you are going through a rough time and have difficulties in adjusting your sleeping schedule.
You may be interested in: 45 Sleep Tips That Will Make You Fall Asleep In 7 Minutes Or Less
Cardiovascular Risks
People who don’t get enough sleep are most likely to experience a rise in their blood pressure. When things get more complicated, they can also end up with hypertension. Sleep deprivation also leads to problems such as stroke and heart attack. Sleeping helps your body reduce inflammation levels, but also pushes it to repair damaged blood vessels.
Health Benefits of Melatonin Supplements
By now, everyone knows about the benefits that melatonin supplements can bring in terms of how fast they help you fall asleep, and how they increase the quality of your rest because they prevent you from waking up during the night.
However, melatonin is a much more complex hormone that people know. Throughout decades, melatonin was considered “the sleep hormone”, but it does way more than just put you to sleep. By analyzing just how beneficial melatonin is, we can get a grasp of how much good melatonin supplements can do.
While the subject of long-term effects of melatonin is still being intensely studied, there are several key types of research that point out other potential benefits of this hormone.
You may want to read: Everything You Need to Know About Melatonin Supplement Side Effects
— Falling Asleep
Melatonin supplements are often used to treat sleep disorders. This is the benefit that really pushes people towards taking melatonin supplements. Studies have revealed that the time required to fall asleep after taking a supplement is reduced by seven minutes. There are many scenarios where melatonin can help:
- If you occasionally work a night shift, then you have to sleep during the day, to charge your batteries for the night. This is very difficult because you’re always disrupting your sleep-wake cycle by having irregular sleeping hours. Melatonin supplements by helping you sleep at the time that’s most convenient to you.
- Those of you that ever flew long-distance and had to get adjusted to a new time zone know how difficult it is to get acquainted with a different sleeping schedule. This phenomenon of tiredness is known as jet lag, and it’s another scenario where melatonin supplements come in handy.
- In other scenarios, people pass through periods of extreme stress, such as financial difficulties, couple argument, mourning over a loss, and other such situations. Because of this psychological difficulty, falling asleep becomes harder. By taking melatonin supplements, one can find it easier to fall asleep and maintain sleep. However, it is not recommended to take melatonin supplements continuously for more than a few weeks. So, if you’re having any anxiety/stress issues, you will have to get to the root of the problem, and either seek counseling or find other means to solve it.
You may want to read: Using Melatonin Supplements for Sleep
— Tinnitus
If you’ve ever heard a strange noise in pitch quiet, something like a ringing, buzzing, hissing, clicking, and such, you probably have tinnitus. Tinnitus isn’t exactly a medical condition, so there is no reason for immediate concern. However, it can be the cause of another underlying medical condition and could point out to an ear injury or a problem with the circulatory system.
Tinnitus is a mild-to-disturbing noise that is more noticeable at night when there is less background noise. Sometimes, it can prevent you from falling asleep. However, taking melatonin supplements can help solve this problem, because their effects induce an uncontrollable need for sleep, which overcomes the disturbance of tinnitus.
Suffering from tinnitus? Check out our Best Tinnitus Sound Machines
— Brain Protection
Melatonin can help strengthen the blood-brain barrier, and there are actually neurological disorders with treatments based on melatonin. For example, there is a protein that helps keep the brain’s cells intact but also helps them regenerate, and it is called “brain-derived neurotrophic factor”. Melatonin can help activate this protein when needed.
It can also help create a stronger barrier between the blood and the brain. When this barrier leaks, it can lead to several psychiatric disorders and cognitive dysfunction.
Studies have also been conducted on mice to analyze the effects of a stroke. These studies have revealed the fact that melatonin was efficient to block cytochrome C from being released from mitochondria (normally, when this happens, cells die). Melatonin is also efficient in brain injury treatments because it helps prevent swelling of different brain regions.
Another study in mice and rats has shown that melatonin may also be efficient in improving symptoms caused by Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. For example, studies have shown that people who suffer from Parkinson’s have disrupted sleep, and this is something melatonin can help with.
— Diabetes
Insulin is released inside the body at specific times per day, but that’s something that melatonin can help change for the better. People who have diabetes don’t have enough insulin in their bodies, and melatonin can help balance that out.
Studies have revealed that both humans and mice with type 2 diabetes have a lower melatonin level compared to their healthy counterparts. Spending one sleepless night can cause insulin resistance, but also metabolism-related problems.
When suffering from diabetes, it’s possible for the pancreas cells to die. Dietary melatonin helps protect these cells, which produce insulin. It has also been noted that rats taking melatonin-correction drugs showed signs of diabetes improvement.
— Blood Pressure
Much like your circadian rhythm, your blood pressure also has cycles, meaning that it gets lower during the night, but increases during the day. Certain forms of hypertension have been linked to melatonin deficiency.
Even if that weren’t the case, blood pressure can significantly increase when you have a sleep disorder, or something else is causing you to sleep less than you should. By taking melatonin supplements, you ensure a restful sleep and regulate blood pressure that rises during periods of anxiety, stress, and tiredness.
— Growth Hormones
As most parents now, children need plenty of sleep for their bodies to develop a healthy immune system, but also to help them grow. Research has revealed the fact that growth hormone levels in boys can be influenced by their melatonin levels.
The growth hormone is released by the body’s pituitary gland. Melatonin can help influence this entire process, because it makes the pituitary gland more sensitive, causing it to release this hormone more often.
— Antioxidant
One of the many fascinating things about the human body is that it turns oxygen into energy, which is very important in keeping the cells alive. What really happens is that the body splits oxygen into free radicals, which are oxygen atoms with a negative charge.
Then, these atoms will bind to other proteins, leading to a number of different health-related problems. In more drastic scenarios, the atoms can kill even healthy cells. The consequences of this oxidation lead to problems such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other problems.
Here is where antioxidants come into play. Their role is to neutralize free radicals, preventing them from causing any damage to the cells. We take a lot of antioxidants to help stop this hurtful process, such as vitamin C. However, the body is also capable of producing a few of its own antioxidants, and melatonin is one of them.
How does this work? At the heart of every cell lies the mitochondria, which plays an important part in turning food and oxygen into energy. Naturally, if oxygen comes into the equation, one must consider the risk of free radicals.
When melatonin is transported to the mitochondria, it can act as an antioxidant, preventing free radicals from doing their job, but also helps inhibit their formation.
— Aging
The aging process can speed up because of a number of different factors. Melatonin can first help because, as mentioned above, it prevents free radicals from destroying cells, which would normally lead to premature aging. However, the topic of whether melatonin supplements can actually help with this is still being studied, like the ones that have truly proven themselves useful in such a scenario where topical melatonin applications.
— Fertility
Melatonin can also help improve overall sperm quality because it prevents sperm cell death. In turn, this can help increase fertility in men. A specific study revealed the fact that oral melatonin ingestion prevents oxidative damage to the egg cells, and can help increase fertility rates in the process. However, the results of the study are still a bit inconclusive, due to the fact that there was no control group.
You may want to read: Best Melatonin Supplement That’s Safe for Children
Bottom Line
Melatonin has so many benefits to offer, it would be a shame not to be able to take advantage of as much as we can. Having healthy levels of melatonin was always important for those who wanted to be in shape and sleep as much as “the doctor ordered”, but falling asleep isn’t always that simple, not when you have internal and external factors keeping you awake.
But, as several studies have shown us so far, melatonin isn’t just the “sleep hormone”, it can impact your health both directly and indirectly (as it helps you sleep and prevent problems that may arise due to sleep deprivation).