IUBio

melatonin and sleep

Sophie Messager messager at jouy.inra.fr
Fri Dec 20 18:09:15 EST 1996


>Can you elaborate or provide any specifics?  Which brands or packings
>of commercial melatonin are misbsranded, adulterated, or of
>substandard potency?  Which are not?

Sorry, I do not know which are synthetized with high quality controls or not. 
What I can say is:

-First: I went to a congress last month, and one researcher told us that he 
has measured the amount of melatonin contained in three different capsules 
from the US. I some of them, he was'nt able to detect any melatonin, in the 
other, he found 8 fold the amount claimed by the firm. I must add that some of 
the capsules sold seems to contains no chemically synthetized melatonin 
,but only bovine pineal extracts (the pineal gland is the gland that secrete 
melatonin), and it seems to me very dangerous as we still not know if the 
bovine encephalopathy ( the illness called the "crazy cow") can develop or not 
 in human beings.

-Second: Even if you wre sure that the melatonin you take is 
correctly synthetized and purified, at this time, we only 
know very little about the long term effects of melatonin on the human beings 
and animals.  It may be good for the health, it may be not. So, it seems very 
hazardous to take chronically such a substance. Don't forget that melatonin is 
not a vitamin, it's an hormone! you wouldn't even imagine to take something 
like growth hormone or insulin daily without a clinician advise, don't 
you? You must have the same reaction about melatonin. Moreover, the fabulous 
effects of this hormone described in the best seller "the melatonin miracle" 
are pure lies for most of them. To date, only two effect are recognized by the 
scientific community: melatonin helps to avoid the effects of jet-lag , and it 
is a sleep enhancer.  There is no scientific proof  that it cures cancer or 
helps you to stay forever young and so on.... 




More information about the Neur-sci mailing list

Send comments to us at biosci-help [At] net.bio.net