when it is later at night, like around 9:00 pm when it’ s really dark. Some people say that you should wear them like goggles so that you get no light even on the sides. I think that there’ s a huge range of prices there, and they don’ t need to be so expensive. I think that for the average person, you can buy a pair of $ 20-type glasses and be doing yourself good. If you use them with a prescription, that would not be a $ 20 purchase.
Adrian: Apart from light, what else affects melatonin?
Deanna: The second thing I think about is just taking care of the diet. Are we eating in an antioxidant, antiinflammatory, nutrient-dense, colourful rainbow way? Think of how melatonin is made in the body. We need protein. If we just back up biochemically, melatonin is made from serotonin. Serotonin is made from tryptophan. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid, and it’ s a unique one. It’ s got a certain structure to it, which makes it interesting from a variety of different cell biology perspectives. But basically in the body, the way that the pineal gland is making that melatonin is by having tryptophan. So if you don’ t have enough protein in the diet, that’ s problematic on multiple fronts. From a detoxification front, skeletal muscle, so many things require protein. And I think just keeping a healthy metabolism.
And also there are zeitgebers, time givers, and they help to punctuate our day and give us a sense of rhythm. For example, when we eat breakfast in the morning, that’ s like punctuating our day. Our endocrine system is being informed that, okay, this is breakfast. So eating is a zeitgeber, and if we’ re eating late into the night, it kind of disrupts our rhythm. So we hear so much about not eating two to three hours before bedtime. Some people do what’ s called time-restricted feeding, where they just have an eighthour window of the day, like from 9:00 to 5:00 that they eat, and then they don’ t eat after that. Some people shift that a little bit forward and do like a 12:00 to 6:00 or 12:00 to 8:00 depending on their bedtime. But you have to note not just what you’ re eating, but when you’ re eating, because that does inform circadian rhythm, and that does inform hormones in the entire endocrine circuit, namely insulin and glucagon, that are tethered into the web of hormones.
So, number one, get your light right. Number two, make sure that you are eating adequate quality protein, adequate plants. Getting the rainbow of different types of foods so that you have copious amounts of antioxidants of all types that would go to different body systems and be protective. One more thing I want to say is about lutein and zeaxanthin, which are two xanthophyll carotenoids found in plant foods, typically the yellowgreen kind, that actually embed into the macula of the eye and can help to protect against that artificial blue light exposure.
If you’ ve done everything else, then you can bring in a plant melatonin. And I specifically say a plant melatonin versus a synthetic one. There are articles talking about the manufacturing of these types of synthetic melatonins where you get potentially up to 13 different contaminants, thalidomides and different kinds of compounds that can be formed. My vote is always going to be with plants. Plants, I feel, have an intelligence, and you have other things in there from the plant, not just the melatonin. But melatonin in a plant is the same melatonin that’ s in our bodies, so they can be used across the board.
All the show notes, the full transcript, and other resources from this episode are available on the fx Medicine Education Podcasts website( https:// www. bioceuticals. com. au / education / podcasts).
166 | vol31 | no3 | JATMS