Scientists have shown that when people are given melatonin in the afternoon, their body clocks can be tricked into thinking it's later, and they get sleepier sooner. Melatonin helps set the overall pace of the master circadian clock in the body. Melatonin may also play a role in lowering body temperature, which is needed for sleep.Ģ. The exact pathway isn't well understood, but it's believed melatonin broadly suppresses the areas of the brain involved in wakefulness. In humans, melatonin is thought to promote sleep in two ways.ġ. In humans and other day-dwelling creatures, it prepares the body for rest and helps maintain that rest throughout the night. Rats, for instance, are nocturnal, so melatonin may play a role in keeping them awake. How the body responds to the message depends on the animal. When it does reach the bloodstream, melatonin acts as a messenger. At night, it flows into the bloodstream - unless we're around bright light or blue light, which suppress the release of melatonin, and keep us up. During the day, melatonin is inhibited by light. In the 1960s, Wurtman and his team at MIT found that light does still reach the pineal in mammals - through the eyes - and controls the release of melatonin. Life Science Databases / Wikimedia Commons In this animation, the pineal gland is highlighted in red. Scientists once assumed that it had served a function in mammals but had become a vestigial organ, bound to "disappear in a few million years," Wurtman says. "In lower vertebrates like the frog, the pineal is in fact a third eye - it’s a light-dark receptor," Dick Wurtman, a MIT cognitive scientist who help discover melatonin's function in humans, says. It's made in the pineal gland, a pinecone-shaped structure located deep in the brain. What scientists eventually realized about melatonin is this: It's the hormone that tells the body when it is nighttime.
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The researchers all took a massive dose of their newfound chemical, expecting their skin to lighten. Melatonin was originally discovered in the 1950s, when a dermatology lab thought it played a role in skin pigmentation. Despite the fact it's a chemical that our bodies naturally produce during sleep, how melatonin actually works, and what it's best for, is worth a good, hard look. It's melatonin, and unlike other chemicals sold as nutrition supplements in America, there's some scientific evidence to back up its claims.īut like all sleep drugs, melatonin's story is complicated. So many prefer to walk into a corner drug store and buy an alternative for just $6 that's marketed as safe and all natural. Of course, there are many prescription sleep aids on the market unfortunately, they aren't very effective and can be addictive and dangerous.
Ever wonder how your mind works? Watch The Mind, Explained, our 5-part miniseries on the workings of the brain.
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