In "the comatose dark cave of the ...

In "the comatose dark cave of the mind/dreams build their nest with fragments/dropped from the day's caravan" (Rabin-dranath Tagore, Fireflies, 1928)

The dream-weaver. Melatonin is a hormone crypticed at night, or in darkness, according to the pea-sized pineal gland at the base of the brain. Inasmuch as the pineal gland is to such a degree small, most biochemists initially ignored it as inessential, not realizing, until lately that this tiny gland hides the powerhouse hormone, melatonin, which is a elucidation factor in determining how drawn out we live and how healthy we are.

Probably the mostly well known benefit of melatonin is its drift on our sleep cycles, since this hormone is covereded at the highest levels when we are in darkness.

In their volume The Road to Immunity, Kenneth Bock MD and Nellie Sabin discuss melatonin's character in resetting our body's "clock" (our circadian rhythms) "[Melatonin] can be helpful in treating jet lag, doze disorders (including insomnia), and seasonal affective disorder (SAD)," say Bock and Sabin. They add that "Melatonin secretion diminishes with age, and melatonin supplementation is conceit to slow aging, perhaps because of its antioxidant effects"

A novel article in Science (January 16 1998) "Tweaking the Human Circadian Clock With Light" explains the circadian connection through every part of nature: "For more than sum of two units millennia, keen observers have noted the circadian periodical emphasiss of flowering plants that blossom only in the daytime or of tree with leaves that interpret during the day and end at night. Such movements are regulated according to a clock within each organism []"

A clock-resetter and more. As Ray Sahelian, MD points disclosed in his book, Melatonin: Nature's Sleeping Pill, approximately 1000 articles a year about melatonin are now being published worldwide, and we are learning that melatonin has a significant influence forward our hormonal, immune, and nervous systems

As mentioned, and as with other glands, the pineal shrinks and hides less and less melatonin as we age. This may be united reason why older people frequently suffer from insomnia. A stop up cousin to the pineal gland, the thymus -- the immune system's master gland -- also shrinks and be deprived ofs its effectiveness. This reduces the immume system's ability to espouse us against toxins, bacteria, viruses, and devastating diseases, as it was as cancer.

Walter Pierpaoli, MD of the Biancalana-Masera Foundation for the Aged in Ancona, Italy, suspected that melatonin could rejuvenate the immune system

His later experiment to confirm or refuse to acknowledge his hypothesis was reported by dint of Janet Raloff in her article, "Drug of Darkness" in Science moderns Reportedly, when Pierpaoli added melatonin to the drinking water of older mice, he raise that their thymus glands, in use started to enlarge, secreted hormones, and fight infections as well as did younger mice.

Other glands also be agreeable toed and secreted more of their hormones. An excited Pierpaoli wanted to conclusively learn whether or not the pineal gland masterys the aging process. So he designed a complicated experiment.

Here's to what degree William Regelson and Carol Colman describe what happened in their work The Superhormone Promise:

"This is no easy feat. The pineal gland in a mouse is about the size of a dot at the [i]finale[/i] of this sentence. [...] Walter reasoned that if a young pineal could rejuvenate an of long date mouse in the way that the melatonin rejuvenated an of advanced age mouse, then it would justify without a doubt that the pineal gland rules aging." The experiment proved his point.

"The mice that received the young pineal glands, like melatonin-treated mice in earlier experiments, appeared to bourgeon younger," write Regelson and Colman. "[The mice's] fur improved, they became friskier, and their immune replication and thyroid function were equal to those of a great deal of younger animals. Interestingly, the thymus glands of the transplanted mice -- [glands] which are usually atrophied in older animals -- were restored to their youthful size and condition...."

In later experiments, pineal transplants from young mice enlargeed the lives of older mice by means of one-third longer than those of untreated mice. Transplants of not new pineals to young mice had a overthrow effect. Geoffrey Cowles' Newsweek article states the following:

"The of advanced age ones gained muscle and potency and their coats grew thick and shiny. Autopsies revealed what was probably part of the reason. The young mice had all further lost their thymus glands after the pineal transplant. The oldster had had theirs restored."

Melatonin and osteoporosis? Insufficient melatonin in the rule may also be a contributing factor in the disclosure of osteoporosis in the post-menopausal period, states biochemist Reuven Sandyk, of Touro society in New York, in the International Journal of Neuroscience.

"There is evidence that pineal melatonin is an anti-aging hormone and that menopause is associated with a substantial decline in melatonin secretion and an increased rate of pineal calcification. Animal [studies] indicate that pineal melatonin is involved in the regulation of calcium and phosphorus metabolism through stimulating the activity of the parathyroid glands and according to inhibiting calcitonin release and inhibiting prostaglandin synthesis.