Despite its antioxidant effects and role in regulating the sleep cycle, melatonin, known as the “sleep hormone,” may worsen gut inflammation and disrupt the function of gut microbiota, a study warns. The community of bacteria and other microbes in the gut is important for health, helping regulate digestion and benefiting the immune system.
An imbalance of unhealthy and healthy microbes in the gut can contribute to weight gain, high blood sugar, higher-than-normal cholesterol, and other disorders. Melatonin is often taken as a so-called dietary supplement without a doctor’s prescription by people with sleep problems.
“It’s generally thought to be harmless. After all, it’s a hormone and can help regulate sleep. However, our research shows that people should be careful about taking hormone supplements and taking melatonin supplements can have adverse health effects,” said Cristina Ribeiro de Barros Cardoso, professor of immunology and neuroimmunoendocrinology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
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The study, published in the journal Microbiology, involved an experiment in which colitis was induced in mice and they were treated with melatonin. Their condition worsened instead of improving.
“It’s important to emphasize that no human patients were involved in the study. The intestinal inflammation in the animals was much, much worse,” Cardoso said.
“We then began to try to understand why. We found that melatonin had a positive effect on the disease if the effect on the gut microbiota was ignored and the mice were treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics to eradicate all the bacteria.”
The negative effects of melatonin, therefore, depend on the bacteria living in the gut and are also associated with inflammatory diseases in this region. Certain properties of the gut microbiota increase inflammation and deregulate the immune system in response to treatment with melatonin, damaging the digestive system.
“We should be very careful with hormones given as drugs, hormone supplements or food supplements. You buy a ‘food supplement’ in a pharmacy and think it’s not a drug, it won’t change anything in your body, it will only do good. Because after all It’s sold as a dietary supplement, but it’s not really that at all. It’s a hormone, and the interaction between all hormones and the immune system is very fine-tuned,” Cardoso said.
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