Comment · Mon, December 30, 2013 · Ceretropic
Are circa 1mg doses of melatonin too wimpy to protect/enhance brain mitochondria?
Original post in this thread
alan2102 · 21 points
"Both in vitro and in vivo, melatonin was effective to prevent
oxidative stress/nitrosative stress-induced mitochondrial
dysfunction seen in experimental models of AD, PD and HD.
These effects are seen at doses 2-3 orders of magnitude higher
than those required to affect sleep and circadian rhythms....
clinical trials employing melatonin in the range of
50-100mg/day are needed to assess its therapeutic validity in
neurodegenerative disorders."
Or, for prevention in (presumably) healthy people, maybe just 5-10 mg/day?
Just a crazy unjustified wild-ass guess.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22391273
Horm Behav. 2012 Feb 25.
Melatonin and mitochondrial dysfunction in the central nervous
system.
Cardinali DP, Pagano ES, Scacchi Bernasconi PA, Reynoso R,
Scacchi P.
Cell death and survival are critical events for
neurodegeneration, mitochondria being increasingly seen as
important determinants of both. Mitochondrial dysfunction is
considered a major causative factor in Alzheimer's disease
(AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD).
Increased free radical generation, enhanced mitochondrial
inducible nitric oxide (NO) synthase activity a…
What they were answering
shydominantdave · 2 points
1. Wouldn't it not be advisable to take a sleep-inducing hormone twice a day? (unless it is like 9PM and 12PM, or you wake up to take it)
2. Not sure if this is talked about, but what about down regulation or disruption of the body's ability to secrete its own melatonin. (This happened to me before)
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
Both of those are valid concerns. The study was attempting to measure antioxidant ability, and did not take into account changes in circadian rhythm or down-regulation.
This is why they are attempting to create melatonin analogs that have the same or better antioxidant abilities, but do not affect the circadian rhythm.