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Fat Loss Benefits of Melatonin – How To Increase Melatonin Naturally

For healthy living and an active daily routine, it’s important to have healthy and complete sleep cycles. During sleep, our body produces a hormone called melatonin which assists in initiating a sleep cycle. There are studies, indicating that melatonin has great benefits for athletes, such as regeneration of body cells, promoting lean muscle tissue growth and fat loss.

Melatonin health benefits

Melatonin is generated in absence of light by our pineal gland. It is a vital hormone since it is important not only in the process of sleep cycles but also maintaining our circadian rhythm so as to control our sleep-wake cycle. It is known to protect our body by acting as a strong free radical scavenger and a powerful tumor growth suppressant.

In addition, melatonin has the ability to diffuse effortlessly across membranes of our cells as well as the blood-and-brain barrier, making it a highly efficient antioxidant. Also, it very effectively searches and eliminates substances like O2 and OH, which are by-products of metabolic reactions.

Melatonin is unique because it is a terminal antioxidant. This means that it does not follow the redox cycle that most antioxidant do e.g. vitamin C. Redox cycle is a cycle of changing a cell’s state by oxidation. During a redox cycle, even the antioxidants go through a phase where they break down and generate free radicals, which is not appreciable. In contrast, melatonin breaks into very stable products upon oxidation; hence further reaction with free radicals does not reduce it any further.

Furthermore, melatonin is an extremely powerful agent of our body that protects it from undergoing DNA mutation. Naturally, this makes it a great remedy to cancer. It also performs the heavy function of fighting inflammation and damage inflicted by free radicals on the brain, by helping blood flow more easily across the blood brain barrier. Studies have revealed that it increases the average life of mice by 20%.

Many studies have also led to the discovery that melatonin makes the cytokines function better. This in turn makes your immune system more sensitive and more coordinated, enabling it to fight better against infections and contagious diseases. This improved coordination brings down chronic inflammatory and auto-immune conditions.

Melatonin and fat loss

But from all these benefits, perhaps the most interesting for fitness enthusiasts is the melatonin’s ability to promote muscle growth and fat loss. Good levels of melatonin, along with proper sleep cycles also stimulate the secretion of the human growth hormone (HGH).

HGH induces the processes of burning fat, building lean muscle mass as well as repairing tissues and collagen for healthier skin, denser bones and better immunity. Proper sleep-cycles help maintain better HGH levels in the body.

Melatonin has also been shown to have profound effects on the IGF-1 axis, thus it is intimately involved in muscle anabolism. 

Studies with rats have shown a great increase in muscle mass when the rats were supplemented with melatonin.  The increase in muscle mass was comparable to that produced with testosterone supplementation.

How to increase melatonin naturally

Given below are some simple ways to induce your body for maximum secretion of melatonin:

1. Go to bed early: Our bodily functions like maintaining temperature and tissues, digestion and secretion of hormones is controlled in cycles of 24 hours that are directly related to the natural light available. As much as 80% of our HGH is secreted between 11 pm to 1 am. People who go to bed by 10 pm are the ones able to bank on the regeneration of body tissues and healing caused by the HGH.

2. Relaxation before bed time: Immediately before you go to bed, take out some time to sit and meditate or just relax. Meditation is said to help in better secretion of melatonin. It also reduces the gap between lying down and falling asleep, improving the quality of sleep. 15 to 20 minutes of meditation before bed to relax by concentrating on your breathing help a lot.

3. Reduce intake of harmful substances: Reduce consumption of products like sugar, caffeine before bed, artificial flavorings & preservatives and processed foods and other such substances as they disrupt melatonin and HGH secretion.

4. Hydrate: Dehydration leads to dire stress in the body, leading to a drop in the secretion of melatonin and HGH.

5. Keep Your Room Dark: If light is filtering into your room at night, it will prevent proper generation of melatonin in your pineal gland. It will lead to disturbed sleep and also drastically reduce the benefits of melatonin.


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