clean up cells very well, when there’ s inadequate autophagy. So, melatonin can work on a lot of these different pathways, which is why I think a lot of biohackers, at least that I’ m aware of, are really into melatonin. Not for sleep, but for its antiaging, or healthy aging as I like to say, properties.
Adrian: So, does the reverse also apply? If somebody is experiencing increased inflammation or increased oxidative stress, would that lower their melatonin concentrations?
“ White to blue light, notoriously the light of electronic device screens, deters production of melatonin by the pineal gland.”
Deanna: Theoretically, it should. It’ s hard to say what’ s the chicken, what’ s the egg? Because in so many conditions, where you see low melatonin, already you know that there are inflammation issues with oxidative stress. So, in theory, yes, that would seem to be the case. Think of mood disorders, dementia, pain disorders, certain types of cancer, even type 2 diabetes: they might all have a relationship with melatonin. We see that melatonin plays a role in regulating blood sugar. Other things might also be in play, like migraine, sleep disturbance of course, and many of the neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’ s and any kind of mitochondrial dysregulating conditions.
When we think in functional medicine about root causes, many times there’ s a number of things going on. And the a trigger can sometimes be a number of different things like toxic load, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle. It’ s not simple. I don’ t see melatonin as the panacea: it’ s not as if you’ re just going to take a supplement and smooth over and reverse aging and be free of chronic diseases. But I think it’ s part of the larger picture of overall hormone balance and endocrine health. It’ s part of a bigger context- physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
Adrian: How do we naturally increase our melatonin?
Deanna: I kind of think of it as a pyramid or a triangle. What’ s at the base? Where can you get the biggest impact from diet and lifestyle? And I would say the base, the foundation is adequate darkness at night. We have to get our light and our darkness right. The problem in our everyday lives is that we live by electricity, which is really great for productivity, but it’ s really bad for melatonin production. I call artificial light pollution an endocrine disruptor that is societally and globally accepted. The density of light in cities is distorting our ability to make melatonin naturally. Because it is truly the darkness hormone if we’ re talking about pineal-generated melatonin. So, I think of children, they’ re on their phones at night, they’ re scrolling, maybe people are on Kindle reading their books late at night. They’ re at gyms with artificial lighting or fluorescent lighting. They’ re at shopping malls, or they’ re in brightly lit places when in nature the amounts of light we’ re exposed to are mediated by sunlight and moonlight.
We are in environments during the day that are probably a thousand or more times less bright than outside, and then at night, we reverse that and we make our nighttime environments much more bright than outside. So, the name of the game is to go along with nature’ s rhythm of light and dark. And that means bright light during the early morning hours. And even that can help to prime nightly melatonin. So: bright light first thing in the morning. Being outside, even if it’ s a cloudy day, you’ re still getting full spectrum light. And then when it starts
to get dim you need to somehow modify your inner environment. And there are apps for this! I use a free app to measure my indoor light, because there are certain measures of light which would be almost like a safe threshold. You need to know how your light measures up in your environment. The app gives you a numerical value for the ambient lux, which is a measure of light. One lux is equal to a candle flame at a distance of one metre.
There are different light exposure recommendations. If you want to run with the sun and then go into the dark, you need, for 3 hours before bedtime, to be exposed to up to 10 lux maximum. Although that may sound like it’ s not a lot, I think it’ s actually quite bright, but in the bedroom or wherever one is sleeping, there should be no more than 1 lux, and ideally zero lux.
Some people have become used to overly bright blue, enriched light, and they don’ t even know it. Another thing that can help is to wear blue light-blocking glasses at night. There is some science to suggest that that can be very helpful. And, believe it or not, eye colour can mediate your sensitivity to that artificial blue light. I have lightly coloured eyes, green ones. People with green, blue, and light brown eyes will be more sensitive to the effects of artificial blue light at night. So they’ re going to be more affected and their melatonin suppression will be greater upon exposure to that artificial
164 | vol31 | no3 | JATMS