Melatonin is a hormone that the body produces in the endocrine system and oversees regulating the biological clock, makes the body of time and its cycles conscious.
Melatonin causes sleep at night, when the amount of this hormone increases in the organism and makes waking up the body in the morning when it decreases.
Many studies have been done to analyse all the benefits that melatonin has in the body besides its effect of helping to sleep. Melatonin stimulates the secretion of growth hormone and that is why the body grows while it is asleep, when the levels of melatonin are high with 10 years of age, when it is still growing, you need to sleep more than at 30 years.
There are currently supplements in several presentations to try to control the biological clock in people who suffer from sleep disorders but have not yet approved the use of this hormone for children or although it is used should be a very low dose.
The Hormone Melatonin
But they also continue to study many other functions that are still undetermined. For example, it has recently been discovered that melatonin acts as a potent antioxidant that fights free radicals.
Melatonin also improves the immune system by helping to inhibit some infections.
The body begins to segregate melatonin at the beginning of puberty, and in old age melatonin levels are much lower, hence a boy with 15 years need to sleep many more hours than an adult of 70 years.
Melatonin is not an exclusively human hormone, but it is also found in animals to regulate their cycles of sleep, migration, hibernation, sexuality and reproductive cycles. When you buy melatonin any of these supplements found on the market are made from animal-based melatonin.
Lately it is very common to see that people took melatonin supplements as a nutritional supplement and replacement that can be easily achieved without any medical control, so it is recommended to consult with your specialist doctor if melatonin can help you improve your sleep disorder and if it will not cause side effects.
It is easy to break the delicate hormonal balance, because when taking a melatonin supplement the organism can detect that the levels of this hormone are covered, or even exceeded, and therefore may stop producing enough of its own melatonin, and is even possible to try to counteract the excess or to unbalance its secretion “normal”, so it is usually produced after the dreaded “rebound effect”.
Therefore, it is recommended to resort to melatonin in specific cases, as it is a hormonal supplement (non-dietary), and only when a deficit is detected in its production, after ruling out other less invasive treatments under the supervision of a professional should be Use.
Insomnia can have very different causes, and there are optimal treatments for each cause. One of the causes of insomnia can actually be a deficit of melatonin, but it can also be caused by emotional blockages, for which psychological or emotional treatment will be most appropriate.
Melatonin supplements can help regulate the levels of this hormone in the short term
Your lack of sleep may be due to nervousness or anxiety, for which yoga,meditation or simply walking for 1 hour a day and taking some supplements of soothing medicinal plants, can be much more beneficial to health than a treatment based in melatonin, which in addition to sleep affects many other functions of the organism.
There is some evidence that melatonin can help fight cancer tumors and lessen the side effects of cancer treatment.
A study of the cells in a test tube found the growth of metastatic breast cancer gradually cells, the cancer cells that means that gradually begin to spread to other types of tissue.
Melatonin has reduced the growth of non-metastatic breast cancer cells.
Several drugs and treatments may interact with melatonin. Birth control increases melatonin levels in the body, so melatonin supplements should be avoided. Taking melatonin supplements with sedative benzodiazepines may cause excessive drowsiness.
