Andrew Huberman· PhD
melatonin regulates other hormones, influences the timing of puberty & is not just the “sleepy hormone”.
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
melatonin regulates other hormones, influences the timing of puberty & is not just the “sleepy hormone”.
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Remember melatonin inhibits gonadotropin-releasing hormone, luteinizing hormone, and the production of these hormones, and melatonin is the effector. It is the hormone of darkness.
a number of you have asked for the evidence that melatonin is potentially detrimental to some hormone systems, melatonin is a hormone. And I'll discuss that at the end, in particular, the role of melatonin in suppressing a hormone pathway that involves luteinizing hormone testosterone in men and estrogen in females. As well as a really interesting peptide called kisspeptin, that's a cool name.
Melatonin during development is also responsible for timing the secretion of certain hormones that are vitally important for puberty. Does melatonin control the onset of puberty? Not directly, but indirectly. Melatonin inhibits something called gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which is a hormone that's released from your hypothalamus also roughly above the roof of your mouth in your brain. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone is really interesting 'cause it stimulates the release of another hormone called luteinizing hormone, which in females causes estrogen to be released within the ovaries, it's involved in reproductive cycles, and in males stimulates testosterone from the sertoli cells of the testes. Melatonin is inhibitory to GnRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone, and therefore is inhibitory to LH, luteinizing hormone, and therefore is inhibitory to testosterone and estrogen.
The first mechanism we could easily map to melatonin and the fact that melatonin is suppressive to various aspects of the so-called gonadal axis, which is basically a fancy way of saying that melatonin inhibits testosterone and estrogen output from the testes and from the ovaries.