High Melatonin Content Can Help Delay Aging

SCIENTISTS searching for the secret of eternal youth claim good old red wine is the answer.

Asimple glass has long been linked with health benefits such as reduced risk of heart problems, lung cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

But now investigators at Spain's University of Granada have gone a huge step further.

They say a hormone found in red wine prevents symptoms of ageing.

Melatonin is produced naturally in the brain in small quantities - but only until we reach a certain age.

However, it is found in large quantities in grape skins.

As these are removed when making white wine, that does not have the same benefits.

Professor Dario Acuna Castroviejo, who led the study, said: "The problem is that human beings stop producing this substance around the age of 30.

"We discovered that a daily dose of melatonin from the age of 40 does not just neutralise the signs of ageing, but also increases longevity."

Melatonin is also found in foods including onions, cherries, bananas, corn, oats and rice.

Wines particularly rich in it include Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chianti. The scientists believe melatonin may also help prevent Parkinson's disease and diabetes.

Researchers gave laboratory mice a daily dose of melatonin with their drinking water, withttp://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=Post&CODE=00&f=6h remarkable results.

Mice not given the hormone began showing signs of ageing at five months old, the equivalent of 40 human years.

At 10 months, or 70 years, they had severe deterioration including hair loss, restricted movement, tumours and susceptibility to infections.

The mice who received melatonin were symptomfree. The professor said: "If we gave the mice a daily dose of melatonin in their drinking water, none of the signs of ageing appeared."

The team of scientists now plan to reproduce the experiment with humans.

Before the substance is available in commercial form, they advised people to boost their melatonin by eating foods rich in it.

The study has been published in the journal Experimental Gerontoloty.

source: dailyrecord.co.uk

http://www.dailyreco...-name_page.html

also:

http://www.huliq.com...lp-delay-ageing

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=24151

There have been some mice studies that show that melatonin increases maximum lifespan by 20%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm....t_uids=12670632
http://www.ncbi.nlm....st_uids=7605949
Effects do seem to be very dose dependent though. Taking the right amount is important. Someone should translate the mouse levels taken in to human amounts. Need to know the amount a mouse drinks a day and average mouse weight etc...

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How much melatonin is there in a glass of wine?

There have been some mice studies that show that melatonin increases maximum lifespan by 20%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm....t_uids=12670632
http://www.ncbi.nlm....st_uids=7605949
Effects do seem to be very dose dependent though. Taking the right amount is important. Someone should translate the mouse levels taken in to human amounts. Need to know the amount a mouse drinks a day and average mouse weight etc...

I agree 100%. This is good news, but dosage is key.

There have been some mice studies that show that melatonin increases maximum lifespan by 20%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm....t_uids=12670632
http://www.ncbi.nlm....st_uids=7605949
Effects do seem to be very dose dependent though. Taking the right amount is important. Someone should translate the mouse levels taken in to human amounts. Need to know the amount a mouse drinks a day and average mouse weight etc...

I agree 100%. This is good news, but dosage is key.

A mouse weighs between 20 and 40 grams. and drinks about 15 ml/100 grams / day. http://www.petalia.c...er&story_no=350

So a 20 gram mouse would drink 3 ml. a 40 gm mouse 6 ml.

At 2 mg/l, a 40 g mouse would get .006*2 = .012 mg of melatonin at the effective dose in the first study.
Thats .012mg/.040kg = .3mg/kg. Human metabolism is supposedly about 6 times more efficient, so a human dose would be 0.3/6 mg/kg = 0.05 mg/kg. So a 70 kg man should aim for not more than 3.5 mg of melatonin a day.

Someone check my math and assumptions, guys, I tend to make stupid mistakes with off-the-cuff calculations like this, but I think I've got at least the right order of magnitude.

Note the mice were drinking throughout the day, and not a single dose in the evening; many people take their melatonin in a single dose before bed.

Thanks Maxwatt,

So a 20 gram mouse would drink 3 ml. a 40 gm mouse 6 ml.

Correct.

At 2 mg/l, a 40 g mouse would get .006*2 = .012 mg

Correct.

Thats .012mg/.040kg = .3mg/kg.

Correct.

So a 70 kg man should aim for not more than 3.5 mg of melatonin a day.

Yup, a 240 pounder (108 kg) (myself) wound need 5.4 mg / day to get those results.

I don't know if the 6x more efficient metabolism assumption will hold true with melatonin dosages though. Perhaps another way to find equivalent dosages is find the dose that mice get the best sleep at and compare that to the well documented dose that humans get best sleep at .3-.5mg.
Note: .3-.5mg is documented for best sleep however 3mg may be best for therapeutic benefits.

Note the mice were drinking throughout the day, and not a single dose in the evening; many people take their melatonin in a single dose before bed.

Yup, in humans, taking melatonin during the day caused irritability, stress, and social anxiety (basically the feeling you get when unexpectedly woken up). Where as stress and depression are quite bad for general health, I imagine that just taking melatonin at night would produce slightly better lifespan increases. I would love to see more studies on this. A 20% increase in lifespan is nothing to joke around about!

It is also worth pointing out that only 2 data points were tested in the experiment: 2mg/l and 20 mg/l. There is an order of magnitude difference between those doses. The optimum dose my well lie between them or below both of them. All of this indicates that lifespan increase may well be more than 20%.

Melatonin has been around for many years. This is just rehashing the old hash. I take 1 mg myself at night. It's interesting to see that grapes have a lot in them. I often eat grapes. I'm very skeptical that it would produce a 20% increase in lifespan in humans but it may help.

While this doesn't mean anything, i will throw this out there: Humans have the lowest mortality rate around 11 years old. This is also the time of highest melatonin production in the body. Of course this doesn't prove causation at all... but it is interesting.

I'm very skeptical that it would produce a 20% increase in lifespan in humans but it may help.

Yeh, well has anyone found studies that show no increase in lifespan of mice taking melatonin? It seems that such a finding would have stirred up some other people to verify the results...

Melatonin has been around for many years. This is just rehashing the old hash. I take 1 mg myself at night. It's interesting to see that grapes have a lot in them. I often eat grapes. I'm very skeptical that it would produce a 20% increase in lifespan in humans but it may help.

Anything that reduces the incidence of cancer in mice extends their lifespan. Melatonin seems to do exactly that. Humans have better cellular repair mechanisms, so cancer is not the main mortality issue. Does reduced cancer incidence alone account for the results seen in the study that started this thread?

Don't get me wrong, I would love for melatonin to give us an extra 20% right off the bat. I just really doubt it. It may help a little bit. Likewise with resveratrol which looks even more promising. Have there been any studies showing humans who take melatonin live longer or are healthier? It's been around for a long time.

Sweet, found the full articles in my school library.
The more recent study found that tumor incidences were lowered by half in mice given 2mg/l. (40% of control had tumors, 18% of 2 mg/l mice had tumors)

What I gathered from reading the full paper, was that mice were LESS likely to die from cancer, however they were more likely to die from something else at an earlier age to make up for that. Unfortunately the study did not list cause of death, it only specified whether the COD was cancer tumor related.

Here is the intro:

During the past decade, a number of reports, sometimes contradictory, appeared concerning the role of the pineal gland in aging (Armstrong and Redman, 1991; Anisimov, 1995; Reiter, 1995; Reppert and Weaver, 1995 and Pierpaoli, 1998). Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxytriptamine) is the main pineal hormone synthesized from tryptophan, predominantly at night ( Arendt, 1995). It has a wide spectrum of physiological effects on endocrine and reproductive functions ( Arendt, 1995; Reiter, 1995 and Vanecek, 1998). With advancing age the nocturnal production of melatonin decreases in various species of animals, including humans ( Reiter, 1995; Waldhauzer et al., 1998 and Touitou, 2001). The performance of a pinealectomy on rats reduced life span ( Malm et al., 1959 and Reiter et al., 1999). The administration of melatonin to mice, rats, fruit flies, or planaria extended life, ( Pierpaoli and Regelson, 1994; Oakin-Bendahan et al., 1995; Anisimov et al., 1997a; Anisimov et al., 1997; Thomas and Smith-Sonneborn, 1997; Mocchegiani et al., 1998; Izmaylov and Obukhova, 1999; Oxenkrug et al., 2001 and Bonilla et al., 2002). Many studies show melatonin inhibits tumor growth in vivo and in vitro ( Blask, 1993 and Bartsch et al., 2001). Interest in all of these observations significantly increased after the discovery of the in vitro and in vivo antioxidant activity of melatonin ( Reiter et al., 1995 and Tan et al., 2002). At the same time, in several studies, melatonin failed to show effects on life span ( Pierpaoli et al., 1991; Izmaylov and Obukhova, 1999 and Lipman et al., 1998). Moreover, long-term treatment with melatonin was followed by increased tumor incidence in some mouse strains ( Romanenko, 1983; Pierpaoli et al., 1991; Lipman et al., 1998 and Anisimov et al., 2001). A critical review of data on the effect of melatonin on the life span and tumor incidence in rodents showed that most studies did not follow guidelines for long-term testing of chemicals for carcinogenic safety ( Gart et al., 1986; Freedman and Zeizel, 1988 and Vainio et al., 1992) or principles of gerontological experiments ( Warner et al., 2000). This aspect has been discussed elsewhere ( Anisimov, 2001).

Here we present the results of a study of the effects of different doses of melatonin on life span, some biomarkers of aging (estrous function, body temperature, frequency of chromosome aberrations) and spontaneous tumor incidence.

Here is how the paper ended:

In conclusion, it is important to stress that the effect of melatonin on life span and tumor development depends on it dose. At relative small doses, melatonin treatment inhibits carcinogenesis, however at others (relative big), it stimulates tumor development. We believe that the study of long-term effects of melatonin at a variety of doses in different strains and species (e.g. in rats) will be useful for making a conclusion about it safety.

The paper also has a good review of previous melatonin research. Cheers.

so more research is needed.

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Caloric restriction, resveratrol and melatonin: role of SIRT1 and implications for ageing and related-diseases.

 

 

Abstract

Ageing is an inevitable and multifactorial biological process. Free radicals have been implicated in ageing processes; it is hypothesized that they cause cumulative oxidative damage to crucial macromolecules and are responsible for failure of multiple physiological mechanisms. However, recent investigations have also suggested that free radicals can act as modulators of several signaling pathways such as those related to sirtuins. Caloric restriction is a non-genetic manipulation that extends lifespan of several species and improves healthspan; the belief that many of these benefits are due to the induction of sirtuins has led to the search for sirtuin activators, especially sirtuin 1, the most studied. Resveratrol, a polyphenol found in red grapes, was first known for its antioxidant and antifungal properties, and subsequently has been reported several biological effects, including the activation of sirtuins. Endogenously-produced melatonin, a powerful free radical scavenger, declines with age and its loss contributes to degenerative conditions of ageing. Recently, it was reported that melatonin also activates sirtuins, in addition to other functions, such as regulator of circadian rhythms or anti-inflammatory properties. The fact that melatonin and resveratrol are present in various foods, exhibiting possible synergistic effects, suggests the use of dietary ingredients to promote health and longevity.