Do You Take Melatonin?

Last month, CNN put out an interesting article on the dangers of taking melatonin as a sleep aid. One of the more interesting observations the article calls out is how we often blindly take medication without knowing the mechanisms of their functioning.

One way we do this is by taking the word "natural" for granted. The FDA currently has no standards for this word, and many food companies take advantage of this, claiming their products are natural (insinuating “healthy”). In doing so, we can also overlook that even actual natural ingredients aren’t always good for us. Petroleum is natural. So is poison ivy, for that matter. Not everything in nature is meant to be ingested, let alone long-term.

Additionally, many people take melatonin to help them sleep, when they have no reason to know if low melatonin is behind their insomnia. If you're having trouble sleeping, it's important to consider your daily light exposure, diet, stress, sleep hygiene, and exercise, as they may all play a role in sleep. You can also take medical tests to assess whether your melatonin levels are out of the normal range, before adding more to your system.

But here’s the big question:

Why is melatonin even in the supplement aisle? Dietary supplements are composed of:

-vitamins

-minerals

-herbs

-enzymes

-amino acids


Melatonin is none of these things. Melatonin is a hormone! Our pineal gland produces melatonin, and even more is produced in the gut.

Our body is perfectly built to maintain balance (homeostasis) - hormones like insulin lower our blood sugar when it’s high, while hormones like glucagon raise it when it’s low. Melatonin is secreted at night and helps regulates our sleep and wake cycles, or our circadian rhythm.

It’s our modern lifestyle of smart phones at night, synthetic birth control, chronic stress, and processed food that throws our hormones out of balance!

So let's just say you run a test and find out you do, in fact, have low levels of melatonin. The best way to fix it is not to give your body the end-result hormone, but rather, to help your body produce more of it on its own.

The old proverb about teaching a man to fish comes to mind.

This is particularly important for long-term health because when we keep "giving the man the fish," the man eventually starves. By continually taking melatonin as a supplement, we're un-training our body to produce it on its own. The same thing happens when we take painkillers - our brain (which produces natural painkillers) stops producing those painkilling chemicals, and it can take a long time to get that system up and running again.

When we follow the conventional medical model of quick fixes, we do ourselves an injustice. If we take Tylenol for headaches, we don't address what caused the headache. I can assure you, it's not a Tylenol deficiency. Knowing that the body should produce enough melatonin at the right time, the question becomes: "What mechanisms and systems are out of balance that are inhibiting normal melatonin production and function?"

That's the question you should be asking your doctor and that's what should be addressed. A functional medicine practitioner can guide you in gently and gradually producing more melatonin on your own.

In holistic wellness, the goal is always to help your body do what it's already designed to do.