Transcription
What's up? This is Dr. Taylor Creek, host of the Auto Moon Doc podcast. And I've got a really fascinating video today about melatonin and melatonin and mitochondria and some of the new research that's coming out about melatonin. And, you know, even in the last, you know, five to ten years, certainly the research is just pouring out.
I had somebody ask me over the holidays, family members asked me, they said, "If you could say one word, what's going to be like the hottest topic in science in 2023?" And quite frankly, at first, I was stumped. I was like, "Boy, I don't know." And I just thought about it. I said, "Melatonin." And they said, "Really?" And I said, "Yeah, melatonin research is crazy."
So we're going to go through this. I'm going to show you a bunch of studies today and just show you the the current research. Uh, obviously, at the end, I'll talk about dosing and things. But this is not medical advice. I'm not saying that you can use it to treat any of these things. It's just being studied for all of these things. And when you understand kind of how the paradigm is shifting and how the science is shifting, you understand how, like, wow, this is why people are doing this.
I got intrigued by this from hearing about it through the long COVID world and just through, you know, practitioner to practitioner world of just knowing that people were dabbling in high doses. I had heard about high-dose melatonin research and coming out of like NASA and stuff like, you know, over five years ago. And at the end, it was just still really like novel and new. But now it's getting to be more widespread. Patients come to me that have been dabbling in it. The research is pouring out. So it's just really, really fascinating.
So today, we're going to talk about melatonin and mitochondria and in the context of things like COVID, cancer, Alzheimer's, concussions, PCOS, and much, much more. What the current science says about this darkness hormone. So our our view of melatonin is changing again. Like I mentioned, the research is crazy. So I'm going to show you five of my favorite studies on it. But, uh, it's being studied extensively for cancer, for Alzheimer's, for metabolic diseases, for PCOS, for long-haul COVID, and and much, much more.
What was previously thought and what's changing with this a little bit? Well, as previously thought is that it was made only by the pineal gland, um, in the pineal gland. You know, we know it's responsible for just like the darkness and, you know, when the The receptors from the from the eyes going to the hypothalamus into the suprachiasmatic nucleus and releasing melatonin in response to sleep. And I'll show you some slides and things like that about, you know, how melatonin declines as we age. I think that's all true. This is all true.
But what we've now found is that pineal melatonin, blood melatonin, so with that too, you know, when you measure melatonin in the blood, it'll be higher at night and it will be virtually non-existent in the day. And as you age, those levels get closer and closer where, you know, if you're above 55, your nighttime melatonin levels are about the same as your daytime melatonin levels, pretty non-existent from a pineal standpoint. So we know that it's declined with aging. But what we now know is that that's less than five percent of total melatonin opponent. So we'll talk about that.
Another another thing that was previously thought is that it had a negative feedback loop, meaning like if you took more, it would shut down your body's natural production. That's what everybody still says. And there is no known feedback loop. The reason that was thought that is because melatonin is a a hormone released by the pineal gland, and that's typically how hormones and glands work. So it was a theory. It's still a theory. It's not been disproven. But there's no known mechanism by which it shuts down natural melatonin production. That just hasn't been shown ever.
We now know that over 95 percent of melatonin is mitochondrial, and there's no known feedback loop for that. What we now know, and again, I'm just, you know, skimming through this because the studies are going to show it. And, you know, honestly, my fear for this video is I don't spend too much time in the studies because there's a ton of them. But melatonin is a powerful antioxidant, a powerful scavenger of free radicals. Melatonin is blood and water soluble, so it can access all tissues and all cells. It can cross the blood-brain barrier. It can access the brain, can just impact, you know, systemic, uh, cellular function. Melatonin exerts its effects via the mitochondria and by altering metabolism. And that's, you know, the root of all diseases, mitochondrial dysfunction. Um, and I'll, you know, again, I'll show you that extensively.
As you age, melatonin decreases, and as you age, oxidative stress increases. And whether those two things are related or not, as you know, up for speculation, but they're just too, you know, correlated things that as you age, melatonin decreases, but as you age, oxidative stress increases. It's one of the major theories of aging, the reactive oxygen species. And then, like I said, blood melatonin or pineal is less than five percent of total. Mitochondria melatonin is 95%.
And then here's the important part. Here's the kicker from a supplemental standpoint is that when you take melatonin, it will increase the melatonin in your blood. That melatonin can get into the cells, but the cellular melatonin, the mitochondrial melatonin doesn't get out. So it can't be measured in the blood. But you can boost melatonin and boost other functions, boost glutathione function, decrease kynurenine function, you know, all kinds of just interesting functions change with melatonin supplementation. So I think that that's really, really important.
Another thing that we now know is that many cancer cells and Alzheimer's cells do what's called a Warburg shift. And we'll just keep calling it this Warburg shift because some of the studies are going to show it. In in that regard, but this is called aerobic glycolysis. In fact, I have this book right here. It's called Cancer as a Metabolic Disease. And it was written, you know, I don't know, five years ago or so. I've I've had it since it came out. But it's all about how cancer starts metabolically from this Warburg shift.
So what that is, is that even in the presence of oxygen, cells will preferentially use glycolysis for quick energy production, especially immune cells. And, and what happens is, you know, if you get sick or something, cells will switch to glycolysis because it can quickly provide energy to fight a virus or something like that. But then they never shift back. And then even in the presence of oxygen, typically in the presence of oxygen, your body's going to shift into something called oxphos, or oxidative phosphorylation. But what happens is these cells get shifted into this carb fermentation and this glucose fermentation, and they kind of stay there.
So in COVID, and other viruses can also induce this shift. So I'll show you an image in a second that just shows that COVID will induce this Warburg shift. And melatonin reprograms this cellular metabolism, blocks this Warburg shift, that impacts inflammation, oxidative stress, protects mitochondrial ATP production, and more.
So here's a graphic. Again, other things do this, first, sure. But this is just, you know, I've shared this in other, uh, you know, webinars of mine and stuff. And again, in the long COVID world, this is a hot topic. So it says, viral infections should induce apoptosis and prevent viral replication, send out stress signals to activate the immune system, but also be tightly controlled by antioxidants. Mitophagy prevents the buildup of damaged mitochondria. Over here, it says SARS-CoV-II, like many viruses, is able to hijack the mitochondria for its own ends, inducing a Warburg shift. So there's that word, Warburg shift.
So in immune cells, this leads to an imbalanced response where interferon production is reduced. Interferon fights viruses. It's a natural killer cell. It's a it fights viruses. It's a Th1 cytokine as well. There's different classes of interferons, gammas and etc. But they they fight viral replication. So it's one of the mechanisms even by which Epstein-Barr virus can reactivate, and, you know, one viral infection can reactivate other viral infections because the mitochondria get hijacked and this interferon gets reduced, and pro-inflammatory cytokines are increased. So you get more Warburg shift, more, uh, less interferon, more inflammation, and then more reactive oxygen species. It says this could be associated with reduced mitophagy in damaged mitochondria that produce more reactive oxygen species.
So anyway, that's kind of the background. You know, before I move into some of these studies. So now I'm going to go into some of the studies. And let me just jump right in. So I chose this one first because of its name. Why won't it move? I'm trying to move it. There. Um, so the anti-Warburg effect of melatonin: a proposed mechanism to explain its inhibition of multiple diseases. I'm not planning on spending a lot of time in this study, but let's just look through this. And it's the idea of some things highlighted here. Let's find some cool pictures.
So, mitochondria: an ecosystem into which melatonin is produced and functions. In normally functioning aerobic cells, an estimated 90 to 95 percent of total ATP production occurs in the mitochondria. This percentage may be reversed when cells adopt a Warburg type metabolism, which a large percentage of ATP has been manufactured in the cytosol, outside of the mitochondria. The total amount of ATP produced in the average adult human is destiny made it to be 40 kilograms per day. So that's like 100 pounds of ATP that you produce every day.
Some other things, just as we're kind of, you know, scrolling through these studies, I didn't highlight much. Again, um, and I highlighted this because the year is so recent. It says, "Finally, in 2016, the first serious attempt was made to determine where in the non-pineal cells melatonin is synthesized." So they're talking about how we've kind of come to this understanding that melatonin is produced in the mitochondria.
Here's the next one that just shows the relevance of these findings. You know, they're talking about all the findings of, uh, antioxidant capacities, how it's, uh, outperformed things like vitamin E and CoQ10 and just different things. It said, "While these super antioxidants were compared with melatonin, they were not better than native melatonin and for some indices were less effective than melatonin in reducing the inflammatory and pro-oxidative actions mediated by the administration of a highly toxic bacterial endotoxin." So they're administering LPS into rats and they're saying melatonin was superior.
It says, "The relevance of these findings extends beyond the anti-inflammatory and antioxidative properties of melatonin in as much as mitochondrial metabolism is commonly disturbed in cancer cells. It's either the Warburg effect, which melatonin has been shown to reverse." So, um, even I'll show some of these graphics in here. Let's go to some of these graphics. This is just showing how it helps mitochondrial, you know, production through some things like melt on blocks if one alpha. If one alpha is hypoxia-inducible factor, drives a lot of inflammation. Let's just say it's really, really bad. Melatonin blocks and increases ATP production. Again, I'm skimming through some of these because the other studies are, you're going to see this like five times by the time we're done.
The Warburg effect, the change is it increases glucose uptake, it increases hypoxia, it decreases PDC, it decreases mitochondrial melatonin synthesis, it increases, uh, intracellular pH, it increases all these things, decreases extracellular pH. So that increases your acidic environment, that increases the excretion of lactic acid, that increases HIF-1 alpha, that decreases oxphos, and all these things. And the consequences, we've got an acidic environment, we get, uh, these things that are blocked. I'll show you a better picture of these later. We get decreased ox, decreases if one alpha, decreased DNA repair. Melatonin can block those things, is basically what this is saying.
This is something called the pentose phosphate pathway, which is another just mitochondrial metabolic thing that can get blocked from melatonin. I'm not going to go too far into it. Um, and I think that that is honestly probably it for this paper. This is just showing again, if one alpha, very, very important thing, very important COVID, very important anemia, very important in, you know, any neuro stuff. So anyway, I'm still scrolling just to make sure, but let's just move on to the next study. There's plenty of these.
This one's cool. I like the title because what they're saying is that vitamin D, you know, has been very famous over the last, you know, decades of, I don't go anyhow, um, for its, you know, role in in everything, right? Autoimmunity and and getting sick and immune function and cancer, etc. And vitamin D is a light sensor. When you're exposed to daylight, your body makes vitamin D. And we have a problem with the under-exposure to daylight today with our indoor lifestyle and an over-exposure to artificial light at night. And both of those are highly, highly studied. But they're saying that melatonin is just the other side of the coin of vitamin D.
So I'll show you some things in this paper, um, just to get some highlights. But it says that this is age. So, you know, I'm kind of in this ballpark here, kind of closer to 40, unfortunately. But I, my melatonin is decreasing. That's again, blood melatonin decreasing as we age. Here's one that shows just while you sleep, it peaks at at night and then goes down with daylight. Here's another one that says that, you know, like some of the commonalities between vitamin D is a biological light sensor and melatonin is biological dark sensor. It's has hormone action. It's antioxidants, anti-inflammatory. It's an immune modulator, regulates the mitochondria, and has pleiotropic system-wide effects. Um, it's found throughout the body. It's found in all these systems, you know.
So I'll show you a few things with that, um, as well. In fact, let's keep scrolling. We're going to get to this is a super long paper, 46 pages. So I'm going to scroll and find something highlighted. So I said, "Oh, I highlighted this just because this is something I'm interested in." In fact, one of the videos, I've got a couple videos on our channel, YouTube channel, talking about this, but the kynurenine pathway. In fact, the last video I just released was about the kynurenine pathway. But low levels of melatonin may trigger an upregulation in the kynurenine pathway. It's also associated with long-haul, different things with kynurenine and chronic fatigue and nerve excitation and things like that.
You know, again, this is super long. So let's read some of these. "Melatonin is both water and lipid soluble, thereby can freely flow among all bodily tissues, especially across the selective blood-brain barrier, making it likely one of the most formidable antioxidants within the central nervous system." Preliminary research also indicates that it may be an active component in the glymphatic fluid. That's the the lymphatic system of the brain that was recently discovered, you know, within the last 10 years. I remember when it came out. But, uh, it's out of Virginia, but assisting in the removal of metabolic waste such as amyloid plaques or alpha-synuclein for, uh, Parkinson's. Theoretically, based on this finding, it may be worthwhile to dose melatonin. So the older adults with neurodegenerative conditions could improve cerebral spinal and lymphatic fluid levels, boosting those fluid levels. However, this concept is still in its infancy. Neurodegenerative conditions share mitochondrial dysfunction in their pathogenesis, meaning the mitochondrial dysfunction is part of Alzheimer's. It's part of Parkinson's. And it's saying that that this is a reason why these things, which could be damaged by many factors, may find protection with administration of melatonin.
Circadian rhythm modulation. Those are certain things that are most well known. So I'm not really talking about how it can help with jet lag, how it can help with sleep. I think again, that's the commonly known stuff. Cognitive conditions, dementia, migraine headaches, eye health, you know, just looking at the titles of these. I, tinnitus, tinnitus, whatever you want to call it. Melatonin has been used to treat chronic tinnitus. That's a neuro symptom. You know, your ears are telling you that there's a noise when there's data actually a noise. It's a it's a neuro, uh, pseudo-epileptiform activity of of of neurons. Uh, so one study observed significantly greater decrease in today's scores compared to placebo. So again, all I could have highlighted something in all of these categories, but I only cherry-picked some things from these studies. But they're all super, super cool.
Um, then reproductive health, pregnancy, infertility. I didn't put much in there, but I highlighted some in some of the other, uh, other, you know, papers that I'll show you. Here's another one. Autoimmunity. Promising emerging research indicates that melatonin supplementation may have therapeutic benefits for autoimmune conditions like MS, Hashimoto's, more likely due to its involvement in anti-inflammatory mechanisms, oxidative stress reduction, and modulation of the gut microbiome. There's only a few other that are highlighted in this paper. So let me scroll to it. Super long, super long, super long, as you can tell here. We go.
"The upper limits of a lethal dose of melatonin have not been clinically established." So this paper goes into the the dosing and the safety. And they're more talking about from a from a conventional standpoint. But the upper limits have not been established. A recent review on high-dose melatonin concluded that there's, you know, if they can't find anything wrong, let's say there's just not enough studies on it yet. So I'm not saying that it's always going to be safe. They might find that there is an upper level of toxicity. I'm not suggesting that anybody be, you know, reckless with their melatonin dosage. But there, there is no known, uh, lethal lethal dosage or upper limit.
"Oral melatonin is mostly perceived as safe based on published reports, even in higher doses. However, there can be specific instances that may necessitate further diligence in clinical oversight." You know, if you're on certain drugs, different things, you know, again, I'm not suggesting that anybody go out and do this on their own recklessly. But, uh, the safety is, is, you know, available and out there. And then this is just the last cool picture that I'll show from this one. But it says, "How do you optimize your melatonin levels?" Well, you know, and I talk about this a lot. I've got a lot of videos about circadian rhythms, blue blockers, you know, I've been wearing mine right now. If my light didn't reflect off, I'm weird. But first, you need adequate darkness at night. I'm, uh, you know, going to track all this with my Aura ring. I sleep with a sleep mask. I love it.
Then you need to reduce artificial blue light at night. You need to use red light at night. You need to reduce artificial blue light at night. Then you need to mess with your diet. Then there's specific foods, cherry juice, etc., that are high in melatonin. I'm not as big on the food source as, uh, uh, especially when you get into these high doses. And then it's supplemental melatonin. That's how you kind of optimize.
Now let's go on to the next study and just keep rolling through these. This one I don't have that much to say on. It's just, uh, I think the title says enough. "Melatonin's Impact on Antioxidative and Anti-inflammatory Reprogramming in Homeostasis and Disease." So I'll just show you a couple things with this. First off, here's a picture of that mitochondria. But let's go down here where we have something highlighted. "Melatonin has been shown to have pleiotropic effects in numerous neurology, endocrinology, cardiology, fetal medicine, and oncology studies. Moreover, it's protective and allostatic effect spreads over many organs and systems."
That are highlighted in this image. The effects: anti-inflammation, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulator, antioxidant, it's cerebral protective, it's lung protective, it's anti-neoplastic, it's vascular protection, cardio protective, placental. Melatonin is very important. The widespread effects of melatonin. So anyway, a cool one. A couple other things that I had from this paper. "Melatonin's role in pregnancy has been studied extensively lately in the growing understanding, in its potential therapeutic use to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes." Melatonin is now considered a key signaling molecule between the mother and the fetus and a new potential candidate in the prevention of complications like preeclampsia or preterm labor or things like that. Melatonin may be beneficial for both the mother and the fetus, mainly but not only due to the antioxidant properties of melatonin. It says that, you know, again, this is preterm birth, but it just says I just highlighted again a couple things. The authors propose that because melatonin is considered generally safe in pregnancy, that they need to study this. It's not, you know, you can't obviously put anybody at risk with a study, but they need to study its effects for the prevention of preterm, uh, preterm birth. Preterm birth is a big unresolved problem of modern obstetrics. But there's a lot of research with melatonin.
I'll show you again in another paper, even some other things for this. "Melatonin is considered to act, sorry to scroll so fast, melatonin is considered to act directly at the mitochondrial level where it reduces free radical formation and protects ATP synthesis by stimulating key enzymatic complexes, complex one and complex four, cytochrome C oxidase." Show you one more picture on this one and then we'll roll on to the next one. "Prenatal programming, vascular effects, cardio protective effects, cardiovascular medications, cardio risk effects." The cardiovascular effects of melatonin is is what that picture is.
Yeah, now let's go on to the next one. So here's the next study. Journal of Inflammation Research. It says, "Melatonin as a Potential Regulator of Oxidative Stress and Neural Inflammation: Mechanisms and Implications for the Management of Brain Injury-Induced Neurodegeneration." So TBIs, traumatic brain injuries, concussions lead to neural inflammation and lead to neurodegeneration. So let's take a look here. So there's a lot of good pictures in this one, more about the brain again. So super cool, just the impacts of, you know, the brain is chock full of mitochondria. There's over a quadrillion mitochondria in in immediate your brain, or in your body. But there's just tons. There's a 100 billion neurons roughly, you know, let's say 85 billion neurons. And you've got, let's say, up to 8,000 mitochondria per neuron. And I've seen literature to suggest that it's way more than that. So there's an innumerable number of mitochondria in your in your brain.
This is just the outline of the paper here and kind of the order that the paper goes in. But it talks about the role, just TBIs, primary brain injuries versus secondary brain injuries. I'll show you a picture of that. And the role of oxidative and nitrosive stress in TBI. So here's a picture of the primary brain injury. It might be like me hitting you on the head with a hammer. The secondary injury are the cognitive dysfunctions, the synaptic degeneration, the blood-brain barrier dysfunction, the inflammation, the oxidative stress, the excitotoxicity, and the cell death that comes from that. So the metabolic changes. TBI and neuroinflammation, just going through the mechanisms of this and how brain injury leads to an increase of oxidative and nitrogative stress, and that leads to all these things. So we're going to keep going and say, how does melatonin affect these things?
So here's, "Use of Melatonin Against Traumatic Brain Injury-Induced Neurodegeneration." It says, "You get a brain injury, you get these things activated: microglial activated, astrocytes activation of map kinases, release of cytokines, release of chemokines." And then we go into another picture. "Melatonin is a regulator of oxidative stress and TBI. Melatonin is an energy regulator in TBI." And then here's a picture. It says, "You get a brain injury, but the melatonin blocks the down-regulation of Nrf2 and glutathione." That's an endogenous antioxidant pathway. Melatonin blocks oxidative and nitrogative stress. Melatonin blocks neurodegeneration and neural inflammation. The the way that those two, you know, gears put together. Melatonin blocks lipid peroxidation. So again, the pictures are are pretty cool, you know, in in this paper, especially.
"Melatonin is a regulator of autophagy dysfunction and NLRP3 inflammasome production or assembly." So says there's a picture of this one too. "You get brain injury, melatonin blocks inflammasome activation. Melatonin increases mTOR. Melatonin blocks inflammatory cytokines. It blocks oxidative stress. It blocks mitochondrial apoptosis and it blocks neurodegeneration." So again, a pretty cool paper here about the brain.
Now, the last one I'm going to show you is is probably the highlight of all of these because it is, go back up to the top. It's melatonin and then mitochondria. It's all the things we've been talking about. It's again, got some good graphics and images. But let's go through this paper from 2020. So it says here, it says, "In contrast to normal cells, many solid tumor cells allow the metabolism of glucose to pyruvate in the cytosol but restrict the transfer of pyruvate into the mitochondria. This is known as the Warburg effect." The Warburg effect, it says, "allows cancer cells to rapidly proliferate, avoid apoptosis, and enhance the invasiveness and metastatic processes that are characteristic of tumors." Since pyruvate is prevented for forming acetyl-CoA in the mitochondrial matrix, the activity of the Krebs cycle is compromised, oxphos is slowed down, and ROS generation is reduced. These changes are beneficial to the survival of cancer cells. So talk about cancer. And again, that is the whole theme of this book again, of Cancer as a Metabolic Disease. The entire book is about that.
So we're talking about the mitochondria, the mitochondria, motherlode of ROS. And, yeah, let's keep going. So just make sure I'm not skipping anything here. But melatonin, oh, this is cool. "Melatonin has taken on the additional responsibilities of promoting the activities of other antioxidant enzymes while suppressing pro-oxidant enzymes." In fact, that's what this picture is showing. But it says, "As an example, melatonin augments glutathione levels by stimulating its synthesis." So, you know, I talk about glutathione a lot. Glutathione is depleted from things like even glutathione depletion is implicated in cytokine storm of of, you know, COVID bad, bad sequelae. Mold toxins deplete glutathione. Smoking depletes glutathione. Air pollution, you know, just environmental toxicity depletes glutathione. Mercury depletes glutathione. Melatonin and raises glutathione by stimulating its synthesis. Glutathione is an important antioxidant that is often present in very high concentrations in cells and mitochondria. Melatonin upregulates the activity of another major antioxidant, and I'm superoxide dismutase, by promoting 3, which allows it to carry out its function of dismutating superoxide to hydrogen peroxide. So those are very, very important things for antioxidants. It's a picture of that. It's not really, honestly, that helpful.
This says, "Melatonin in Mitochondria: Home Sweet Home." "For years, melatonin was known to have a major impact on mitochondrial function, as manifested by its ability to improve the efficiency of the electron transport chain, enhance ATP production, and reduce mitochondrial ROS damage." That's what we want. We want to enhance the ATP production. We want to reduce the ROS damage. And it's in the mitochondria. So this says, "Importantly, mitochondrial melatonin levels were clearly not related to pineal-derived melatonin concentrations." Because in these studies, they took rats and they took out their pineal gland, and they still had high levels of melatonin. So that's how they found out that it's not only from the pineal but also from the mitochondria.
Says, "Melatonin has meant, oh, this is about females again. Melatonin has many beneficial actions on peripheral reproductive organs, which have been especially well-defined in the female. The concentrations of melatonin in the pre-ovulatory ovarian follicular fluid are higher than in the blood, and adding melatonin to the medium recently ovulated or vitrified oocytes aids their maturation and development." So anyway, oocytes, eggs, and sperm have tons of mitochondria, like a hundred thousand mitochondria in their cells, which is an insane amount. But, you know, sperm have to have a lot of battery power to, you know, swim. And eggs, they just do a lot, you know, they make humans. So they require a lot of battery power. So it's really interesting that melatonin has been shown with all this stuff with PCOS and, you know, fertility things like as we previously mentioned.
So here's another good picture that it just says, I just highlighted, "Evidence suggests that of all cells, mitochondria produce melatonin." Again, here's another one, just that I, I just highlighted the title, but "Melatonin: The Interactions with Mitochondrial Glucose Metabolism." And here's probably the best picture of this whole thing and kind of wrapping this up as far as the research with that Warburg effect. So up here, it says, "Warburg effect." It leads to an increase in gluten, I think that's GLUT4, like GLUT4 transporters. It leads to an increase in glycolysis. See, there's a key. Doesn't matter. Shouldn't do this right now. But, uh, these are the increasing glue, increasing glycolysis, increasing lactate, uh, dehydrogenase, and pyruvate dehydrogenase, uh, kinase. So it increases these things, the Warburg effect does. Then it leads to hypoxia, growth factors, oncogenes. And melatonin blocks HIF-1 alpha. Melatonin blocks whatever this is, whatever this is. Melatonin blocks cell proliferation, angiogenesis, metastasis. A lot of these things, even, you know, angiogenesis, VEGF. These are markers that are commonly associated with mold in a chronic inflammatory response syndrome as well. Other things that damage the mitochondria. This is saying probably the most important thing with the, uh, Warburg effect is melatonin blocks pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase, which pyruvate, PDK, blocks PDC. We don't want that. We want PDC to be working. So that's one of the ways that melatonin works is it blocks this. That then allows this to happen, and we get more, more ATP production, and we get this increased, uh, electron transport chain. So more ATP production in melatonin's effects on all of that.
So anyway, uh, it's just interesting. Now, those are the studies. I think they're super cool. But like, how do we do this? Oh, one more. This one I don't have that much to say on, but it's just in my stack of melatonin studies. And parasites are a fascinating topic. Gosh, that's so annoying. "The Role of Melatonin in Modulating Parasitic Infections." So I said I highlighted in this context, "The therapeutic potential of melatonin in protozoan infections, blood protozoan infections, is evident. However, considering intestinal parasites, helminths, and protozoa, reports are rare." Intestinal parasites are known because anemia, poor physical growth, poor intellectual development, and impaired cognitive function. So they're saying we don't know about some of these parasites, but we do know about others. And it says, "The press, the prospect of therapeutic, therapeutic use of melatonin in parasite infections is promising and prompts further investigation." So anyway, that one's just interesting.
But so then, how do we do this? What are the appropriate doses? Again, this is not medical advice. You know, run this by your doctor, whatever. But, you know, this is something that people are buying over the counter. They've been doing for years. You know, a lot of people have tried it for sleep. A lot of people tried it with their kids. A lot of people tried it with, you know, jet lag, whatever the case is. Conservative doses. And I'll talk about my experience too. Conservative doses, like typical doses, 0.5 milligrams to three milligrams. I'll tell you, we sell melatonin. We use melatonin. And I have one that's a one milligram, and it knocks me out more than some of the others. So again, what I'm talking about today is kind of this new science of melatonin, this new application. If you're trying to just fall asleep at night, one milligram might do the trick. Three milligrams might do the trick. Five milligrams might leave you feeling hungover the next day or have that, you know, next-day melatonin effect. With high doses, I have not been finding that you get that. In fact, it's a little bit different. So I'll, I'll, you know, read that below here.
But those are your typical. More aggressive dosages are now being used with with success, I should say. And again, this is in long COVID circles. This is in forums and message groups. This is in practitioner circles that I'm in. So it, the research that I showed translates into the why, why are we getting clinical success with this? But more aggressive dosages are now being used for issues like neurological issues. So brain fog, TBI, you know, memory loss, anxiety, depression. I don't know as much about mental illness. But anything brain-wise, anything mitochondrial-wise, you know, the kynurenine pathway that we talked about, that can be associated to many neuro issues, TBIs, concussions, you know, people with head traumas, long haulers for sure. It's common in long haulers, chronic fatigue, the chronic, the the ME/CFS community, mold toxicity, heavy metal toxicity. Anything with a mitochondrial component, I think this, uh, uh, application is starting to seep into those circles.
But here's some of the dosing that's out there that's available. One to four milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Now, when I first saw that, somebody said that to me, and they said, "Yes, you read that correctly." Because that's insane, right? If five milligrams makes you feel a little hungover in the morning, 10 makes you feel kind of groggy. This is 250 to 300 milligrams or 200 to 300 milligrams. I've heard of people, people that I know personally, that are using up to 500 milligrams and, you know, no side effects. I've heard people using 150 milligrams nightly for many, many months now and then no side effects. So there's a lot of variation in these anecdotes, in these stories, and it kind of depends on the application and what you're trying to target.
I actually just had somebody text me and, you know, I sent her some of this info, and she said, "For how long?" I said, "Well, that's the magic question." You know, I don't know. This needs to be a lifelong thing, or if we just need to use it short-term to kind of reset that Warburg effect, or if you've got neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration that's been, you know, a 10-year problem, it might not be a, you know, one-week fix. I, I don't know. And I don't think that anybody knows yet. That's what we're all trying to kind of figure out and use this research and use anecdotal evidence and and say, "Hey, it seems safe, it seems logical, seems plausible." And then we do some trial and error with it.
So, so one to four milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Then there are also different forms. So there are powders, that's just easier, better absorption. There are suppositories, that's getting some fame. In fact, one that I, I've heard it from two separate people that I respect, it's called Sandman. I think it's called Sandman. And like one, you know, somebody sent me a picture of it, and it was 200 milligrams of melatonin and 250 milligrams of glutathione. And hers was the CBD-free. So they also have them with CBD. And again, if it's like an accident, sleep effect is my suspicion. There's liposomal. So sometimes with liposomal, you don't need the same dosing. So I know Quicksilver makes a liposomal. And they're slow-release. There's fast-release. I've been using a chewable that's 10 milligrams.
And so here's what I've heard and what I've also experienced. I've heard, and this is on like Reddit forums and things, I don't dabble on that that much, but, you know, this information is getting out there. But anything like 0 to 20, 0 to 50 is going to have a tiring effect. But as you get into the higher doses, it can actually affect your sleep and you actually sleep worse. So, so one night this week, I did 50, and I would say that I slept a little bit worse. But I felt amazing the next day. I felt really clear. My energy, it honestly, it was kind of like the first time I did a ketogenic diet, like felt like vroom vroom, like rocket fuel for my brain. But my sleep scores might not have been as good. So this week I've done 30, 35, then I did 50, then I went back to 30. And I've just been tracking it with my Aura ring. I certainly have had not had any side effects. I was nervous. I'm still nervous to get up to 100, 200, etc. But this confirmed what I've been hearing is that it more had the energizing effect. And even the 30 nights, you know, 130 night, it was my sleep score was a 91, my Reddit score was a 95, and just like rock solid throughout the night, you know. And I do other things to hack my sleep. So it wasn't like that was the only variable. But I was really, really happy with it. I'm certainly going to keep dabbling with this myself.
So I just got a 20 milligram capsule. I'm going to keep dabbing with the 10 milligram chewables. And again, there's a lot out there. So my encouragement is again, you know, with medical supervision, whatever, run it by your doctor or whatever you want to say. But dabble with this if it's something that you are curious about. Again, this is an over-the-counter supplement. It's not medical advice. It's not medical treatment for any condition. But the research is out there on melatonin's effects on mitochondria. And because of that, its effects, the possible effects are things like cancer, Alzheimer's, TBIs, long haul, mold toxicity, heavy metal toxicity. And that's the world that I live in, is the Mido world. So I'm super, super excited about this. And that's why, again, to come full circle, that's why when somebody asked me what do you think is going to be the hottest topic in 2023, I said melatonin.
Now, if you know me, my science interests change quickly. But I don't think this one's going anywhere. But it's always mitochondria. It's always metabolism. It's always neurology. It's always how can we help sick people get well in this chronic, complex disease space. And melatonin, I think, is only going to become a more usable tool in the toolbox as we learn more and see more happening. So thanks for tuning in. Uh, let me know if you have any questions. I'm sure there'll be more coming out about this. Check out my podcast, the Autoimmune Doc Podcast. Check out any other, you know, resources on this page as far as videos and things like that. If you like this kind of topic, I've got a ton of other content as far as mold or kynurenine pathway or ketogenic diets or different things, circadian rhythms, and all the things. So thanks, you guys.