Unlocking the Power of Melatonin: Dr. Deanna Minich's Insights for Optimal Health

I'm thinking of melatonin not as a hormone, but as an antioxidant and anti inflammatory because even the metabolites of melatonin are antioxidant in nature. So one molecule of melatonin can sweep up 10 free radicals, which is pretty good. It's actually excellent because vitamin C can Sweep up about 1 or 2, vitamin E about the same. You know, they're more limited because they tend to be water soluble or fat soluble, whereas melatonin can cross the blood brain barrier. It's fat soluble, but it's also water soluble.

Welcome everyone to Impact Wellness podcast. And I would love to welcome my guest. I have been trying to catch her for my my podcast probably for last four or five years, but she has been very busy and I think it wasn't the time probably. As Diana create always mind, body, spirit, heart connection. So our energies finally align. And Diana, thank you so much. You are my teacher, you are my big mentor. Even we haven't met in person, but I've done some of your courses and you amazing guide scientist, mind body connector, heart reader. Your painting is amazing. Your, your Instagram is full of colors. And I wish as a practitioner and as a person who probably takes therapies from other therapists as well, we have more people as you.

Thank you so much, Daria. I'm so glad that our paths are now aligning and that we get to have this conversation. I've been looking forward to it.

Perfect. And today conversation I think is very important because melatonin is something that is upcoming. We know that has been in research and in probably clinical use for a long time. And I know personally, many of my clients or who become my clients or my friends or colleagues have been using melatonin. But the question is if this is the right way and right application for them. Because melatonin is something different structurally than magnesium. What is melatonin?

So melatonin has long been seen as a hormone that is released by the pineal gland during darkness. So that is the classical way that many people have envisioned melatonin. We also know that melatonin is a chronobiotic. So it keeps our circadian rhythm in alignment. That's part of the reason of why the pineal gland produces the melatonin. It's also an extremely potent antioxidant. And what's really unique about it is that it's both fat soluble and water soluble and it can scavenge a lot of free radicals compared to something like vitamin C or vitamin E. It's Very potent in that way. It is anti inflammatory and what we see in nature. Now this is really interesting, Daria, because my platform for many years has been around plants, looking at the colors of plants. So as I got into the literature on melatonin, what I realized is that melatonin is everywhere in nature. It's in plants as a growth factor to make other phytochemicals. So we eat very, very small amounts of melatonin just in the diet. We're talking picograms, nanograms, but still it's everywhere. It's in animals because they have it as well. So what is melatonin? You know, I think it wears many hats. I think it's more than just what we would classify as a hormone. And in the paper that was just published, I was saying in the title, all of us that wrote this paper, we were saying, is melatonin the next vitamin D? What we see, and you were asking about women's health before we went live, is that throughout the life cycle our bodies start to produce less melatonin, especially when we hit our 50s, which is when we see perimenopause transitioning into menopause and then postmenopause. So why do our levels plummet? Is there a role of melatonin and aging in the mitochondria? So I think melatonin is a lot more. And in fact, in the article we were saying how perhaps melatonin is actually a nutrient. Maybe that's why it is in our food supply. Maybe that's why our bodies have it, because we need it. What is a nutrient? It's needed as a CO factor. It's needed for our biochemistry, it's needed for our physiology. So I would contend that melatonin is actually much more than a hormone.

But yes, thank you so much. So that would make sense that that maybe is a question. Do we need supply melatonin from outside sources? Because if we don't get it enough from food and it's everywhere in like kingdoms of plants and animals and we are part of this natural circle, do we have it enough in our body? Especially with menopause, for example, heating down, everything is dropping. And you mentioning around that age 50, melatonin also is going to go down.

Yes, exactly. And if we think of why we age and why we get chronic diseases, there are two theories and one is around inflammation, that one of the major reasons for chronic disease is the low level amount of inflammation that occurs with age. That's called inflammaging. And then the second one is oxidative stress that essentially we're creating more rancidity or damage in the body just by way of metabolism. And so how do we clean up a lot of that debris, a lot of that damage from toxin exposure or overeating, all of the different things that lead to the production of this reactive oxygen species. And what we know about melatonin is that it can fulfill both of those functions in a very potent way. And Daria, I'm hoping we can also talk about, I mentioned how melatonin is in plants when it comes to supplements. There are different kinds of melatonin that we can get and there are certain kinds that work better than others for that antioxidant and anti inflammatory activity.

So maybe let's talk, please, let's talk about that. Because I think the key here is for our audience to understand, but they always will ask, okay, so what can I use? What is better? And because we want for them to get the best out of the supplements, if they want to supplement.

Right, we do, we do. And you know, obviously it's very important for them to consult with their healthcare practitioner, with somebody like you to make sure that they are using the appropriate dose, the appropriate product. They're taking it in the best way, especially if they have medication. So I just want to say that because melatonin can interact with certain medications, right? So just like anything, vitamin C can interact with certain medications. So we just want to be cognizant of that. So let me thank you for mentioning.

Thank you for mentioning that. That's very, very important.

Yeah, I see it as really important. You know, anything that we're taking in. And also consistently, let's just say that we're 55 and we're starting to think about aging. We want to be more robust, more resilient, have a better chance at longevity. If we're going to start doing melatonin every day throughout our lives, let's just understand the implications of that. All right, so here's what I learned and I did not know this. So as I started to look into melatonin, what I realized was that 99% of the melatonin supplements on the market. So this is like if you look at Amazon and you look at all the products and you add them up, 99% are synthetically derived, meaning that there's a chemical process whereby there's some kind of chemical compound that is subject to a series of steps with many chemicals that then produce this synthetic melatonin. And by way of that whole process, many times what can happen is that you produce other things that are contaminants in the final product. And there's one publication in particular that speaks to 13 different contaminants potentially in melatonin products. So that got me concerned because one of the platforms that I teach on is detox environmental health. And so that's concerning that people would be spending money, especially for children to take a gummy with melatonin. But how is the melatonin interacting with the gummy? Are there other things in there that we don't want? Now the 1% of other melatonin supplements on the market are derived from plants. Now just because it's derived from plants doesn't always mean that it's better. You can have a starting material that is plants. You can, that could be corn, that could be, you know, some, some type of plant that would not be as desirable. And then it's subject with chemicals to the same process and it's still called plant based. There is one particular melatonin that has been reviewed and studied in 2021, published in the Molecules paper by Dr. Meissner's group in which they took a phytomelatonin and, and this phytomelatonin is called erbatonin and they compared it against synthetic melatonin and showed that it was superior to synthetic melatonin. It was a better anti inflammatory, it was better in its antioxidant potential. It could clean up those free radicals. And with erbatonin versus some of the other types of plant based melatonins. Erbatonin is the plant cell wall matrix. In other words, it hasn't been extracted with chemicals. It is the plant in its more whole form. So it's got beta carotene, chlorophyll, it's got lutein and zeaxanthin which are good for the eyes. So in my way of thinking, if somebody's going to supplement with melatonin, number one, check with your practitioner. Number two, if they don't know about erbatonin, have them learn about erbatonin just because there is a study published on it. And, and again, I'm just so skeptical of the different kinds of melatonins. Sometimes when we put other ingredients into a melatonin we don't know the reaction, we don't know the interactivity of those things. So just having a low dose to replenish our levels from a plant cell matrix would in my mind be the best route for most people.

Thank you so much for explanation of this how and where comes from melatonin and different types of melatonin. And I think this is a great. It's coming, a great contemplation also for me as a practitioner here. But the question is coming to me, how do people know that they need more melatonin?

Yes, let's talk about the clinical uses of melatonin. And again, it's good for people to have that assessed through their practitioner. But most people think of melatonin for sleep, which is really interesting because if you look at the data on sleep, there isn't a preponderance of data like there is for other things. Now, when it comes to sleep, if sleep has been disrupted because circadian rhythm has been disrupted, then I think we have a case for melatonin. So let me give you some examples. Like people who do shift work, so they're working at night and they're sleeping during the day, they could benefit potentially from melatonin. People who are experiencing jet lag, who do lots of travel and they're traveling across time zones, having some melatonin before they go to bed in the new time zone may be worthwhile to reset their circadian rhythm. So that's plausible. So even within circadian rhythm, that's just one way to see it. But then there are so many other clinical uses of melatonin because it's in our bodies, it's mostly in our mitochondria. I would say we need to be looking broadly. So cardiovascular disease, I'm just going to run through, like the big body systems and then you decide what's of interest, because it sounds like you want to talk more about women's health so we can get into that. But in terms of body systems, what I talked about. Well, with the whole team, we were kind of looking at the emerging research and what we see is cardiovascular metabolic syndrome. We see brain health, cognitive issues, even a connection with reducing the risk for dementia, maybe because of the sleep. Sleep is better promoted. We also see a connection with behavioral mood disorders like ADHD or even autistic spectrum disorders, such as in children. Now, that might be a case where melatonin supplementation might be indicated in kids gut health, which I know that you're passionate about. When we look at eye health, even because the eye is the connector to the light that actually primes the brain, that then helps the pineal gland to get the signal. So eye health, skin, skin health. We see that melatonin was actually found in the skin, which is why it's very similar to vitamin D, because they're both There. And then when we think of reproductive health, reproductive health, if I break that out into fertility, pcos, and even looking at endometriosis, there might be certain protocols for which melatonin might be indicated. And that might be for a variety of reasons, because we know in pcos as an example, there's insulin resistance. So that's a high oxidative stress, high inflammatory type of condition, in which case melatonin might be indicated for women in order to bring them into balance. You know, I also, Daria, I found an article just recently showing how the sex hormones like estrogen and even the monthly cycle is interwoven with melatonin. You know, being that melatonin does have a hormone type function, that there's an interrelationship with hormones, even if we think of in the morning with cortisol and testosterone typically being high, there is a dynamic relationship there. So if cortisol is disturbed in somebody and somebody is highly stressed, chances are their melatonin is off. Chances are so many different functions. So I would say in just about every body system there is an indication where melatonin might be indicated. And then of course, the obvious, which is aging. We talked about that. To start how the melatonin declines. People start to get issues in their bodies in a variety of different areas. And there might be some reason to try melatonin to replenish those levels, much like they would replenish progesterone or estrogen or even thyroid hormone. You know, we always think about replenishing hormones to get us back to where we need to be. So I wouldn't see melatonin as being any different in that regard.

I love what you're saying, but it's an interesting first part because it's true. People when they think of melatonin is asleep is like the equation, right? It's fake sleep. And actually I found some of my clients, including myself. I was supplementing myself with melatonin during the last three years because I was breastfeeding for a very long time and I was like having disrupted cycle of sleeping and sometimes getting anxieties at night. And obviously cortisol is constantly high. And I was trying to use melatonin and I would be even more stressed, even more anxious, and I couldn't sleep where my husband is. Just give me more, give me more.

Oh, interesting.

So I've noticed that. And I had the same feedback from recent clients I've been working with. And it's the same, you know, it's kind of awake me. So it's Interesting where it's again, we're coming back to the root cause medicine here. What really cause melatonin to go off. We just don't go and supplement. So that is one clinical finding. And second thing is just intuition was telling me when I test cortisol, the chronic response and melatonin, what I often see that melatonin is a great balancing or hormone or nutrient that balance the response of what's happened with cortisol. Because I've noticed usually when people are very low on cortisol, melatonin usually goes up. So it's nicely balancing whatever is happening. Next question would be before this menstrual cycle regulation is should we test melatonin before we take it?

That's a possibility because you can test melatonin in the urine, the serum and the saliva. The only thing is that there are some pros and cons of testing. One is that it can be extremely variable depending on when people are testing it. The darkness will be influencing the melatonin production. So it has to be done in a very systematized way. But yes, typically what you'll see in functional tests is they'll measure the output of one of the metabolites of melatonin in the urine. So that can be done. But keep in mind that, that I would say just gives a general sense of the metabolism of melatonin, not the need state for melatonin per se.

Interesting. So what is coming to me, it's similar, like B12.

Yeah.

Because B12, most of many people I see is very high.

It's very high, yes.

Question is it is actually high inside the cell, functionally is high. Right. So this tells me that melatonin might behave in a similar way. This test metabolite of melatonin.

One of the things that we didn't yet talk about, but is of interest is that melatonin is throughout our whole body systems. The pineal gland, melatonin seems to be different than some of the other melatonin produced in parts of the body. Not different in structure, but different in terms of function and location. For example, the gut produces up to 400 times greater the amount of melatonin than the pineal gland. But the gut uses, or at least there's localization of that melatonin and it seems to be produced in response to a meal. So post processing prandial response of melatonin is there's some connection with the gut. So what are we measuring when we measure the urine levels of meta. Of the melatonin metabolite Are we measuring the cumulative systemic effects? Are we measuring pineal gland melatonin? I just think that there are a lot of questions. So that's why I think we just have to get clear on back to the root cause. What would it be used for? I think in my mind, the biggest thing to use it for is circadian rhythm imbalance. Again, when, when our circadian rhythm falls off because of travel schedules, we're doing different kinds of eating, intermittent fasting, which can also tie into circadian rhythm, the aging aspects, the menstruation aspects, which can change sleep and circadian aspect, even seasonally. Seasonally, we may have some changes, especially as we transition into longer days or even shorter days. So I wanted to go back to what you said about you and your husband too, because one thing that many people don't realize is that the way that melatonin is processed in the body, like if you're taking a supplement, it goes through phase one and phase two metabolic detoxification. So if you. It sounded like you had a paradoxical effect where you did not sleep well with melatonin.

Neither my mom. Neither my mom, because I gave to my mom and she's post menopausal and she said, you know, it's actually keeping me up.

Kept her up. Yeah. That definitely is not the intent. Right. So then we have to look at, well, how much was given? Is it a high amount, is it a low amount? Because that amount that needs to go through its half life and progression through the kinetics, through the liver may, if you're a fast metabolizer, you may actually create an early peak of your, your melatonin. And then, so there might be a timing aspect where you take it at a certain time. You're taking a different amount to, to help with the release of melatonin. But I do think just if, if we just step back and say, aside from melatonin supplements, how can we get better about our sleep? Let's look at our lifestyle. One of the things is that we need artificial blue light. If we're looking at sleep and sleep disturbance, we have to look at lifestyle. It's not just popping another melatonin supplement just because we feel like, oh, that's going to help us sleep. I do think we need to be looking at our environment, our habits, how we're living. What I see is that many people, including myself, sometimes I'm on the phone late at night, I am on the computer late at night. Sometimes there are certain things that we can do as a workaround, like we can Put on blue light blocking glasses. We can change the intensity of the light on our screen. But some people, you know, they're taking their phones to bed with them, they're watching movies or watching videos, and it's dark, but yet they have this bright light. This is going to change the production of melatonin from our pineal gland, and it's going to create a circadian rhythm and balance. So first and foremost, let's just get clear in our environment, trying to biohack that in such a way that it's more productive for our health rather than just trying to patch up things. But if we're using melatonin for other indications, like mitochondrial health, as a regulator. Daria, one of the things that we didn't talk about though too, is also looking at its role in cancer, which we won't get too much into because cancer is a big area on its own, but it's been used in cancer for like three decades worth. You know, if we look at Dr. Lasoni's work back in the 1990s and using different levels in cancer. So that, that's kind of interesting. But I do think when it comes to just looking at sleep, we need to be looking at like, okay, why are we not sleeping? Are we stressed? Is it cortisol? Is there a time of the month of our cycle when things are disturbed? Are we eating too close to bedtime? Do we have pain in our bodies that aren't allowing us to sleep well? Are we urinating and waking up in the middle of the night needing to go to the bathroom? How can we better gauge hydration, food stress levels without needing melatonin to cover all of those bases for us? Because it may or may not do that.

Yes, this is why I have Diana on this podcast, because she always comes back to the root and gives us buffet.

As she said, one day to be.

A buffet of stuff. And now you can pick and choose, right? It's not just one thing. And this podcast never meant to be. Just let's promo melatonin supplement, right? Because we have to think holistically about our life and health. My question is, I come back to this regulation of menstrual cycle and let's few moments talk about that, how this is related to this estrogen progesterone production. I think many women suffer with dysregulation regulation in menstrual cycle. Either they know about this or they don't know about this. Like PMS is the very common one, the pcos, as you, as you mentioned. But I Think as we are going for with women from 35 up, they having this pre menopause, perimenopause, menopause, post menopause, stage. Right. And younger women as well. How in a nutshell would would you help them to think about the connection and what they could do to support themselves?

Yeah, well, as you know, Daria, I know it's a big question and I have a lot of passion around this actually, because I have really struggled with dysmenorrhea, endometriosis myself. So personally I've had these issues throughout my life cycle. Now I'm perimenopausal now things are very different. But if I think back to all of the tumultuousness that I went through on a monthly basis, like helping women to get their lives back, because for some of them it's like half of the month, they can't work, they can't be their optimum selves. So we have the follicular phase and then the luteal phase. Just very simply the follicular phase, the first half of the cycle, roughly days 1 to 14, and then the luteal phase, days 15 to 28. So it's the luteal phase, or as we prepare to actually undergo the bleeding, is when we start to see a lot of this disturbance. So like days 19 to 21 can be particularly vulnerable for many women. I see it in a very spiritual way. I see that within that time that we become more vulnerable, we become more intuitive, we become, you know, in touch with our more creative selves. Like, if we could see that, as, you know, that's one level of seeing it emotionally and mentally. Like, let's use that time when we can to journal more, to make more art, to have more time for self care, just kind of bake that in as much as we can. But what we also know from a physical, physiological perspective is that throughout the menstrual cycle, nutrients are going up and down. Minerals, iron is especially low at the end of our bleeding time. Right. And then we look at zinc, we look at copper. There was a great article and I can give this to you to put in the show notes about how different levels of nutrients, like minerals and vitamins, they flux. And then those vitamins and minerals seem to flux with the hormones as well and with lipids. So similarly, you can imagine that melatonin is connected because everything is a web. And so seeing that there can be variations in melatonin, and as I see it, particularly in that luteal phase, when things are a Little bit more subject to go awry or when most women experience symptoms, especially with sleep, with appetite, with mood. So that's where we need to take again better care of ourselves. So looking at food, activity, stress levels, you know, back to what we were saying about cortisol because cortisol can throw off the period as well. And a lot of the symptoms that interrelate to our menstrual period. So I think it's the great big hole. And for women listening to this are like, oh my gosh, that's so much to think about. Where do I even start? Well, where do we start is just even with food, you know, just following more of an anti inflammatory way of eating less processed foods again building in time for self care as much as we can. Even small amounts of self care to reduce that stress. I think starting there, working with a practitioner, optimizing your nutrients because you know even things like B vitamins are integral for energy. And so many people are deficient in bees. And we don't just need one bee, we need all the bees. They're like a big happy family. And if we're missing just one, it becomes the rate limiting factor for the whole metabolic reaction.

Thank you.

So there are a lot of things.

Yes, yes. And I think that's why I'm saying just cut through and let's extract the most important stuff that people actually can take it and do it. And I really love the way you talk about second part of menstrual cycle being a spiritual path. And it's, it's really great. I am so connected thanks to my journey into everything that I have learned and it's just so powerful. I even started to follow, I think it's now for five, six years rhythm of the nature. So I stopped to challenge myself in month, November, December, January, February. I'm just giving a break because it's so much stress on the adrenals already we're living in this darkness and and then I'm leaving this. I'm like okay. When I'm too much, I'm like okay, let's connect with nature and really this work. But as you said, we have to have, want to learn to unravel. So then we are able to apply whatever we are also saying here. Right. So thank you Diana. And my question linking to this rhythm of menstrual cycle is many women take some birth control pills. We know it is a synthetic hormone one way or another way or progestine or estrogen or the both. My clinical observation, they take in very early in their poverty, often 12, 13. And I know the cases, and that goes for 20 years. And I know the cases or 25 years. Then the heating. Menopause. No. Now we have this big wow on menopause and how is important and it's great. My worry is, as a clinician, we then put in women on hrt, another type of hormones that are not natural. Do they ever, for 30, 40 years time, outside of maybe childbirth, when they decided to be pregnant, being off the hormones, how this can affect women's health overall and this melatonin cycle.

Wow. Okay, so all right.

How do we unpack this out of the questions? Because if there is some answer here, I would be interested to hear that.

Yes. So I'll give a longer answer and then I'll make it short so that everybody has it. So when it comes to hormones, hormones are synthesized, transported, activated, metabolized and excreted in the body. You know, there are many different levels of hormones. So when we just think about synthesis and getting them in the body, that's only one level of hormones. That's just like, okay, popping a pill, give me oral contraceptives, give me hrt, hormone replacement therapy, and I'm just going to synthesize, have that in my body, and it's ready to go. But yet we need to think about transport. We need to think about activation through the receptors. Everybody has different types of receptors. How do we metabolize and excrete? Because actually, hormones are seen by the liver and by our metabolic detoxification as something to be detoxified like our system, whether it's melatonin, estrogen, progesterone, the way our bodies work is to metabolize and get those things out of the body. We want to ensure healthy levels. So sometimes it's not just the popping of the pill. It's the metabolism and the excretion part that gets faulty in the body. That's what can cause symptoms. So let's imagine a woman has taken oral contraception for 20 years and then she stops and now she's perimenopausal. I would be thinking about all of the potential metabolic implications, like has there been buildup, has there been proper elimination? Because some of the metabolites of hormones can actually be very problematic. They can go on to create DNA damage. So, Daria, what I think of is not so much the repletion, repletion, repletion with repletion, without metabolism and elimination. If a woman is constipated all the time, well, we need to focus on the Constipation, because then her levels of hormones are going to be different because just because she's constipated, she's not eliminating the biotransformed metabolites. So my takeaway to everybody listening is it's not just taking more hormones through the skin or in the mouth or as a pellet, whatever it is. It's so important to work with a practitioner who understands metabolism and excretion, because what our body does with the hormone determines its effect, determines its efficacy or its potential risk. So we need to have that. In light of our personal medical history, our family history, we need to be assessing that. So anytime there's taking of hormones, if somebody is not being attentive to the metabolism and elimination, in other words, the detoxification, that could be problematic. So how do we do that? You know, there are so many different ways to better metabolize. Like in some cases, I think it's good for people to get their gene variants, especially for certain enzymes that relate to hormone metabolism, specifically things like sulfation, genesis, or even the cytochrome enzymes like CYP1B1, which is very much implicated in metabolism of estrogen. So it's not just the taking in, it's again synthesis, transport, activation, metabolism, elimination. And if we don't get at metabolism and elimination, it's like only the first entry point without the exit point.

We want balance because it is possible. Right. Let's take the hrt. Right. Will kill one problem, but make generate another problem. Another problem related to transportation, transformation and biodetoxification and removal of that. And I think that is always for me, good question to ask, you know, what's really happening and how really is your health before you start hrt. We cannot just really follow the symptoms that are telling us that someone has menopause, because then there is no overlook the gut. And we need to have healthy gut to have a healthy detoxification. Otherwise it's a problem.

No Abs, I'm so glad you brought up the gut for a second. Let's just like portal into the gut for a second. Yes, because there has been some scientific research to suggest that there is a change in the gut microbiome. When women go through perimenopause, so their guts, their microorganisms start to look more like a man, where you don't have as much in the way of estrogen, so you start to get changes. In some cases there can be dysbiosis. And if our gut microbiome is changing, that means that metabolism of estrogen and Other hormones would be changing. So interesting. Yeah, we need to pay attention to this gut.

Very interesting because then we know that also there is link between gut and metabolic syndrome. And really what happened around menopause, women getting fatter on the middle, right. The inflammation, all the changes, and it is all connected. And we cannot just extract one thing. Right. This is kind of the holistic way of looking at menopause and, you know, using HRT or bioidentical hormones. Diana. So the same thing will be in regards to detoxification with melatonin. Right. It's not just how we take, but how we, what you mentioned, metabolize what's going on with melatonin after we take it.

Correct. And typically melatonin is hydroxylated through cytochrome P1A2. So it's the same enzyme that metabolizes caffeine. So if we have lots of coffee, that could change the metabolism of melatonin. And then secondly, it is conjugated mostly. There are other cytochromes as well, but then it's sulfated. So if we have low sulfation enzymes, then that could implicate the metabolism of melatonin as well. So yeah, we need to be thinking about what our body does to it, not just giving ourselves more hormones, thinking about the gut, thinking about metabolism. And then there's even the other overlay of toxic load. So when women go through perimenopause, a lot of things start coming to the surface. Like we don't have the protection of estrogen anymore. We don't have the nice cushy layer of progesterone to keep us sleeping and keep us in a healthy mood state. So lots of things start to come to the surface. We get more inflamed, like you're talking about belly fat. And what also comes to the surface is all of those toxins that we built up over our lifetime which sit in the fat tissue. Now we start to potentially get the effects of that because we don't have all of the hormonal, I would say, shielding that we had before now. We might be in more pain, we might have more joint and musculoskeletal disturbances, issues with sleeping. And this is where, you know, just to bring in melatonin again, because now I'm thinking of melatonin not as a hormone, but as an antioxidant and anti inflammatory. Because even the metabolites of melatonin are antioxidant in nature. So one molecule of melatonin can sweep up 10 free radicals, which is pretty Good. It's actually excellent because vitamin C can Sweep up about 1 or 2, vitamin E about the same. You know, they're more limited because they tend to be water soluble or fat soluble, whereas melatonin can cross the blood brain barrier. It's fat soluble, but it's also water soluble. So in cases like perimenopause, where women start to become more translucent and there is the sense of, you know, more inflammation, bringing in something like that to help them along.

Thank you so much, Diana. And as you said, there are many things to think about. We don't want anyone overwhelmed. But I think if you. That is my conclusion on menopause. And I'm not yet menopause, I'm 42. At some point I'm definitely in some perimenopause, but I feel good. No, but menopause is not ending your life. That is number one. But second thing, if you want to have a better move and transition right. To another phase, you have to start earlier, you have to prevent it is if we think of this not as a disease. Right.

Because that's celebrated, not medical.

Exactly, exactly. We need to think about prevention because you can work with your gut, you can lower area the inflammation, you can work on your body composition, you can work on. So when this transition comes, you're not like a bump of surprise, you know.

Exactly. Whatever comes. Yes, well, and I also want to say, yes, you're 100% spot on that prevention is, is worth, you know, much more. But if a woman has not been attentive to her self care, she's been raising children, she's been working, and now all of a sudden, like a wall, she hits perimenopause. There is still hope because the body is so resilient. So it's not like, oh, the door is closed, you didn't prevent this, you didn't work out enough, you didn't eat the right foods, now you're doomed. I mean, there is even a study looking at 70 and 80 year old people being on a Mediterranean diet and having better markers and just starting at 70 or 80. So like our bodies are incredibly intelligent, informed, resilient. They want to adapt and to be in a healed state. So I think it's always best to start earlier so you don't have to unwind a lot of the conditions that you might create. But there's also hope for women going through the transition. And again, I see it in a very transformative light. I see like, wow, who am I becoming as I go through the second half of my life. So I'll be 52, and I'm thinking about that for myself. It's like, wow, like, the first half of my life is like, done. So who am I in the next half? You know, it's. It brings up a lot of spiritual, emotional, mental questions about who you are and how you can live a more authentic life without perhaps a lot of the. The other things that you were encumbered by in your first half of your life. You know, you get wiser.

Yes, yes, Diana, why? I'm just going to shift back to the melatonin. Why? We're hearing melatonin may become another vitamin D, which means very popular, right? Everyone talks how, how we need vitamin.

D. Okay, so let's think of vitamin D. How do we get vitamin D? We know of the shortage of vitamin D. We heard a lot about that during the pandemic about Vitamin D is its antiviral effects, its effects on the immune system. It's a potent antioxidant. Even though we call it a vitamin, it's actually kind of like a hormone. You know, the fact that our body makes it and then it moves to another part of the body to have activity. So we find vitamin D in the skin and the precursor vitamin D in the skin. And then when we're in the sunlight, we can get the reaction to a more active form of vitamin D. So it's very sensitive to light, sunlight. And that's why we could say, well, wow, so many people have a sunlight deficiency. They're indoors, they're working indoors. They're not in nature. They have a deficiency of sunlight. They have a deficiency of vitamin D in the natural sense. Similarly, melatonin to me is like the sister of vitamin D. Vitamin D is like the brother, the yang, the light. Whereas melatonin is the quieting yin that only comes out at night. It's only produced during the darkness, at least from the pineal gland. Right? If we're just talking pineal, not gut or skin or. So when we look at the darkness, it's almost like vitamin D is our daytime nutrition and melatonin is our nighttime nutrition. And they kind of work together like yin and yang, which we know from traditional Chinese medicine and many other ancient traditions. Right? So that's why I see them as working together. They work in collaboration, as I would say, and that's what we talked about in the paper, is that sunlight deficiency, vitamin D deficiency. If somebody has a vitamin D deficiency, I often question if they would also have a melatonin deficiency, because that already tells me that probably their immune system is off, their circadian balance is off, so that in some way may be implicated into an imbalance of melatonin, which is the the opposite end, but yet very much interconnected to vitamin D. Makes sense.

All makes sense. The moment you started to explain that way, I'm like, okay, that's, that is the yin and yang and that comes during the day, Other one comes during the night. Diana, many women in business, entrepreneurs or this path actually they are having children or they might have like me, three and a half or two and a half. Do you think we should supplement children with melatonin?

The short answer is unless there's a good indication, like the child has maybe adhd, gut dysbiosis and autism spectrum disorders, or like there's some specific reason where they would be low in melatonin, I don't think children should be supplemented. And I'll tell you why. If you look at the curve of from birth to old age and death, melatonin peaks in young children. It's actually the highest. That's the most amount of melatonin we're ever going to get from our bodies is during young childhood. As we go into puberty, it starts to come down. We go into our 20s, it's coming down. 30s, it's coming down. By the time we hit in our 50s or 40s, 50s, we're starting to bottom out. By the time we're in 60s, 70s, we have bottomed out. So children have a naturally high amount of melatonin just in their regular state, their endogenous state, their physiological state. So I don't think that melatonin should be the first go to for children who aren't sleeping. I think we need to look at other things. Let's look at their diet. Are they taking in a lot of sugar? Are they ramped up for different reasons? Are they on devices late at night? What is their stress level? What are things like at home? What about their toxic exposures? Just even looking at the sleeping room. So to me, I would not say to transition into supplementation for kids just because they're not sleeping well. I feel like unless there's a really good indication that could be backed up, that would never be a go to in my mind. And unfortunately what we see in the market is we see things like chewables and gummies. And I also think that we have the risk of children overdoing melatonin because they're in all of these tasty forms. And then a child starts to get in the routine of like, oh, I want my gummy before bedtime. And then they keep doing this and I don't think it's good. Long term, we don't know the effects on puberty or hormonal development. Longer term aging is a totally different thing because we're through the major growth and development phase of our lives. So we don't have to think about changing that or disrupting that. That's a different purpose to take melatonin at low physiological levels. But a child has typically very high levels of melatonin, so why are we giving more? And in fact, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, there have been CDC reports very concerning about saying, like, let us not go right to melatonin supplements for children. We need to start looking at the root cause of why the child's not sleeping. Don't just give them this pacifier of a melatonin supplement which may or may not be working. And we don't know the long term implications of that. So, yeah, I'm a bit thumbs down on having kids take melatonin supplements just as a matter of course for sleep.

Okay, thank you so much. That's very interesting. I've got one more question, as we discussed so much about melatonin. What are your recommended doses for melatonin? And in shorts, and if you have any company that you can suggest. We're not promoting anything here, but we want to know what to buy.

Okay. All right.

So by the way, a few more minutes if you.

Okay, no worries. No worries. Okay. So first of all, I just want to quickly comment that through breast milk, melatonin can be transferred to the infant, which is really important in those first couple of months of life because the baby has lower amounts of melatonin at that time, but then it starts to go up. So the fact that you did nurse, you did breastfeed your daughter is a really good thing for her melatonin levels. So that would help to equilibrate, get the gut in good working order and.

That kind of thing at the cost. Right. And that is, I think, podcast to do, because that is not. Is a cost. Mother really gives a lot at this stage. And you have to have all of this in place to be able to do it. Right. And I know many women suffer depression. They cannot breastfed. And that's what I'm hearing because these are. It's like running marathon.

Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot on the. And it's taking a lot of your internal resources. So you just have to be sure that you are constantly engaging and making sure that you have enough nutrients for yourself because that breast milk will be a conduit to giving over a lot of your nutrients. Okay, so to answer your question about dose, dose of melatonin and of course everybody knows, check with your practitioner on this. But in general, what I can state is that there is some research, some early research in which they had a study of looking at 0.3 milligrams versus 3 milligrams of melatonin. And they actually found a better effect in a number of markers on the lower dose on the 0.3 milligrams. If we look at replenishing the levels, you know, coming back up a bit. And so looking at that 0.3 milligrams. Now let's just imagine now that could, that could be modified per the individual up to about a milligram depending on if they do shift work, are they metabolizing the melatonin rapidly, when are they taking it? All of those kinds of things. But a low dose I think is, it's a physiological dose. Now could there be an indication where a more, a higher dose like 3 milligrams could be used? And I would say yes. Where you want to jumpstart that circadian rhythm, like in jet lag, like with jet lag, you really need to. It's almost like you have to push a big reset button. And so a physiologic dose of 03 may not be enough. You might need to actually have a higher dose. And so the literature would support a higher dose of melatonin for jet lag. Now in cases like cancer, and that would obviously have to be done under the supervision of a practitioner like an oncologist, much higher doses have been used. Again, it's like, well, what is maintenance for most people with healthy aging? 0.3 milligrams to about a milligram. What about special cases like jet lag? About 3 milligrams, 3 to 5 milligrams. It just kind of depends on your physiology. And then for certain indications like mitochondrial aging, cancer, these kinds of things that are more critical and you need melatonin for more of its antioxidant properties or anti inflammatory properties. Higher doses, you probably saw that during the pandemic melatonin was used as part of COVID 19 protocols. So it was vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C and melatonin. In fact, that's where melatonin started to catch my eye. I was thinking, why is melatonin being discussed with all these vitamins and Then as I started to look into melatonin, I saw, oh, melatonin upregulates glutathione. Melatonin helps with toxic load removal and it's doing so many other things. It's not just a hormone. Like in my own mind, it was very static and stuck on, oh, melatonin is a hormone. But then I realized, no, it's really important for the immune system. And in fact, there's some newer data on multiple sclerosis and even there's one study on Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So looking at autoimmune conditions immune. I've even corresponded with Dr. Terry Walls about it a little bit and you know, she, she likes melatonin. Talking with Dr. David Perlmutter about it. He takes melatonin. You know, we were talking about melatonin on his podcast. So all in all, I just think it depends what the indication is. And before we supplement to like, just be smart about it, like, is that exactly what we need? Have we accounted for food, diet, exercise, stress, and could melatonin be filling the gaps of what we can't fill through our everyday behaviors and actions?

Thank you so much, Diana. And what is the brand?

Oh yeah, so the one that I was talking about to start.

Yes.

The plant cell matrix based melatonin is called Erbatonin. E R B A T O N I N and that's the one that was studied in the molecules 2021 paper. The company that makes Erbatonin is called Symphony Natural Health. So people can find it online. If you just Google earmatonin, you can be taken to, you know, it's sold on Amazon and it's found in a variety of places. So that would be my, my choice pick for a plant based melatonin that I know even has other things in it that are good for you. You know, the, the phytonutrients that occur alongside of the phyto Melatonin.

Yes. Thank you so much, Diana. It was an amazing podcast, I think. Lots of great information. We touch women's health as we did planned. Right. So thank you so much and hopefully everyone enjoyed and is going to, you know, use it or not use it, but it's about spreading the informations.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Daria, good speaking with you.

Thank you, Sam.