JJ Virgin and an expert discuss how vitamin C, vitamin D, and melatonin affect hormones like oxytocin. Melatonin production declines with age and depends on upstream hormones like progesterone and serotonin. Morning sunlight, red-light therapy, and sauna work better than supplements alone for restoring natural rhythms.
So supplements that can help boost, support oxytocin production, or I'm not sure if it's supporting the production of it, keeping it around. What are, like, what can we do?
Well, several, several factors. One is vitamin C. Vitamin C is a key component. Vitamin D, like if our vitamin D levels are low, think about low vitamin D, depression, low oxytocin. You need vitamin D on board for all of our hormones to work really well. So vitamin D, you know, higher melatonin— and melatonin also is key. From melatonin will metabolize to oxytocin as well. That good night's sleep, you feel better the next day.
So I have a question around that, that I'm glad you brought that up, because I still remember when I was younger and I took melatonin and I felt like I was hungover the next day. And then, you know, decades later, I started using melatonin and didn't feel that, right? And so obviously I'd been normal in my melatonin before, and then now I'm low. And I hear from people, they're like, oh no, you should not take melatonin all the time. And I'm like, well, why wouldn't you take melatonin every night if you're low in melatonin? You know, it doesn't make sense to me that you would cycle it or do anything else if you're low in it. Why would you want to be low in it? It's so mission critical.
It is mission critical. I think the thing— same thing with oxytocin, where I pulse it for clients. I may keep them on short-term, 3 to 6 months, and then intermittently in between or after, because anything that we're taking, any exogenous hormone that we're taking on a regular basis, is going to potentially provide negative feedback and decrease our abilities manufacturing of that hormone in and of itself.
However, as we age, we're not able to produce as much of, say, melatonin. Right. You know, and then we're not producing estrogen. We're not like, I can— doesn't matter if I pulse estrogen or not, I'm not going to produce the estrogen I need to feel like a— I don't want to crawl out of my skin. So with melatonin, if you're aging out and you're not producing the melatonin you would have, Why would you wanna pulse that? Wouldn't you wanna just get it back to the levels that you used to have so you feel good, sleep well, et cetera?
You should take it on a continuous basis to get that sleep cycle established. To get that sleep cycle established. And there are other reasons to take melatonin too in higher doses for immune function. And in our cancer protocols, melatonin's a key factor.
And I know with brain injury too.
With brain injury as well. The key factor too, when we think, okay, melatonin's low because of age-related issues, but how do we we make melatonin, we need to have enough progesterone and estrogen on board, or we're not going to make melatonin. Because without enough progesterone, we're not going to have enough dopamine as well, because progesterone helps decrease dopamine degradation, the breakdown of dopamine. And from dopamine, we make serotonin, which we need estrogen on board to make serotonin. From serotonin, we make melatonin. So if something along that pathway is not working— I'm, I'm in the philosophy now more than ever after 30 years of practice is that, you know, look at the— look at the pathways. Look what leads up to it. How can we optimize every step on the pathway? And what do we need to make serotonin? We need tryptophan on board, 5-hydroxytryptophan. So like, okay, so where, you know, can we support 5-hydroxytryptophan, which has other roles in our body besides making serotonin and melatonin and will help with mood? So up the food chain, down the food chain, supply what is needed for the time needed. And in the case Use of melatonin, I think more information is really needed long term, especially in, you know, over age 60, to look at daily chronic use. Now, in someone in their 40s, I wouldn't do it chronically every day for a year. You've got to address the underlying issues causing your body not to make melatonin. And you're like, okay, you're getting your, you're getting your morning sunshine, you've got red light, you've got sauna, you're working on setting your circadian rhythm. It's like, okay, I wouldn't deny you thyroid hormone, so let me give you melatonin hormone the same way. And so in that situation— but I've seen clients coming in in their teens, or with teenagers who have been on melatonin daily, and I think that's a mistake.
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense that it'd be something in your 50s, 60s, 70s that likely even giving everything in the pathway, the cofactors, be 6, things like this, you're just not going to get where you need to get.
Right, right. And suddenly, I mean, we're living inside versus outside, so really resetting that, emphasizing the importance of circadian rhythm.
And, and I live with a mole, like, literally, it's great at night. Tim does not— has very light-sensitive eyes, so at night this is great. We turn everything down. I would normally— I'm like, flip all the lights on. But in the morning, I'm like, okay, mole, we got to like put some lights on, you know.
