Melatonin Research

I recently received an article called On the Effects of Melatonin on Sleep and Behavior in Man, written in 1974. This article provided me with some intresting information about melatonin, though nothing that couldn’t be explained in much of Dr. Strassman further research into the effects of melatonin on humans patients.

I have always wondered about the production of melatonin in humans and how it differs from those of other animals. As interesting at it is this article had a little information about that area. In birds evidently melatonin is highest during the night time as well as in rats. This is interesting since if melatonin is a sleep aid, then why is that animals are nocturnal and not falling asleep at night? Though the article doesn’t seem to explain this interesting concept, it does go on to talk about how melatonin affects different parts of the brain.

The researches explain that melatonin is also present in other parts of the nervous system. In relation to the hypothalamus, micro injections of melatonin into the hypothalamus produced sleep like waves in animals.

As we now can assume after Dr. Strassmans research into melatonin and the psychotropic effects of melatonin that there is little evidence that shows melatonin as anything of the sort. Even when one of Dr. Strassmans patients were accidently overdosed with large amounts of melatonin they experienced no signs of psychedelic effects. The article as being written long before Dr. Strassmans study into melatonin, had some information that some individuals did experience a psychedelic like effect from melatonin.

In the study conducted in the research, it showed that melatonin had little effect on the change in sleep habbits of the individuals who took them. It was however a sleep aid and helped to induce sleep better. Much of the follow up research seemed to be conducted by Strassman as I read in his book about DMT.

-L