Melatonin caveat

By at 3:22 pm Monday, Feb 7

Scientists at UC Berkeley and Hiroshima University reported today that popping melatonin could screw with your body chemistry in undesirable ways at the same time it helps regulate your sleep-wake cycle.
In experiments on the Japanese quail, the researchers found that melatonin switches on a recently discovered hormone called gonadotropin inhibitory hormone (GnIH), which has been found to have the opposite effect to the key hormone priming the body for sex -- gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH). In birds, switching off GnRH causes the gonads -- testes and ovary -- to shrink as part of the birds' yearly cycle.

Though the role of melatonin is likely to be more complex in humans, the fact that the hormone has such a big effect on birds suggests it could have significant though unnoticed effects in humans, said George E. Bentley, an assistant professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley....

"It really amazes me that melatonin is available in any pharmacy," Bentley said. "It is a powerful hormone, and yet people don't realize that it's as 'powerful' as any steroid. I'm sure that many people who take it wouldn't take steroids so glibly. It could have a multitude of effects on the underlying physiology of an organism, but we know so little about how it interacts with other hormone systems."
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David Pescovitz

Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.

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