Today on the Gut Health Reset Podcast, Dr. Ann-Marie is bringing you a special mini-episode to discuss melatonin and how it can affect you. When you think of melatonin, you might associate it with sleep. But melatonin actually has a lot to do with the gut, and understanding why, and how to increase your gut melatonin can truly help you and improve your health.
Today we are going to talk about five ways melatonin actually impacts the gut are you struggling with bloating gas constipation and fatigue but don’t know what’s causing these problems the gut health reset podcast with dr anne marie barter dives deep into the root causes behind these issues that start in the gut this podcast will give you the knowledge you need to
Heal your gut and reset your health thank you so much for joining us here today on the gut health reset podcast i’m your host dr anne-marie barter and if you think of melatonin you think of sleep right i mean that’s kind of the first thing we all think of with melatonin but it actually has a lot to do with the gut in fact there is more melatonin in the gut 400
Times more melatonin in the gut than there is actually in the pineal gland so let’s talk about why having more melatonin in the gut is important and why you actually want more melatonin in your gut so um first things first is that it helps your epithelial gut lining and so this is basically a fancy way of saying that it helps something called leaky gut and it works
With your barrier and it actually protects your gut and keeps things where they should be so it’s not just a physical barrier but it has a lot of other functions like it’s going to help you absorb your nutrients it’s also going to help with your immunity it’s a system called innate immunity it also deals with antigen sensitization and bi-directional microbiota
Basically this helps us not have a leaky gut and keep things where they need to be in our good bacteria where it needs to be and maybe our bad bacteria in check so this is kind of the difference um between somebody you know you do a school test on somebody and suddenly they have a parasite they’re like i don’t have any symptoms of a parasite to somebody that’s
Like oh my goodness i have all these symptoms of parasite i’m having all these gastrointestinal issues um but i i also think about this in another way there was a comedian that was actually preparing for his wedding and he sent out a bunch of um cards that that basically asked hey do you have any food sensitivities and i don’t think he was prepped for what he was
About to get back he was expecting some peanuts and maybe some gluten sensitivities aka wheat but he also got broccoli bell peppers dairy and he was kind of blown away by how many sensitivities were actually on the cards and he kind of made a tongue-in-cheek joke about it but for all of you out there that know how food affects you it’s a big deal for you but for
Some people they have a better barrier and they can deal with it better so our immune system is also in our gut and a really good way that we have uh found this um i i interviewed another researcher on um the gut health reset podcast and i’ll let her tell her story i’ll provide a link below but she talks about covid and actually they’ll link with the gut and she’s
Asked the age-old question that a lot of us want to know the answers to which is why are certain people really stick with covid and other people don’t even know that they have the virus like what’s the difference and she has found a link with our gut specifically gut bacteria in our gut that makes certain people not have any reactions and other people that don’t
Have this gut bacteria have really huge reactions to something like cobin and she believes that this research is really in its infancy but i think it does demonstrate the link to say hey there is something with the immunity and with the gut um you know as something as recent as a viral infection with covid so let’s bring this back to melatonin so how in the world
Does melatonin help out with the gut it feels a little strange again since we really associate melatonin with sleep and the brain um when i describe how melatonin helps with the gut and the first question is well how much should i take or what supplement should i get and that’s all fine and good but um melatonin is a hormone and i think that a lot of times when
I tell patients that they get surprised like oh really i don’t want to take a hormone right so yes it is natural but it is still considered a hormone so in this episode i really want to talk about some natural ways that you can boost up melatonin without actually having to take a supplement that can be highly protective of your gi system and just simple lifestyle
Changes that you can take and make so melatonin is very important it actually helps at prevent ulcers it also is going to reduce the amount of stomach acid especially if you’re prone to ulcers it helps in diseases like ulcerative colitis and can be protective in colorectal cancer so all very important it also is going to increase your immune response it can increase
Your circulation or your micro circulation in your gut so that you actually get improved healing the other thing that we have found in the research is that it’s really important for ibs type symptoms as well as colic believe it or not so melatonin has a lot of incredible uses um in our gastrointestinal system so how do we how do we increase it naturally i think
That that’s a question that everybody wants to know so intermittent fasting can actually increase melatonin levels they found that periods with eating and then periods of food deprivation actually can increase your melatonin production i.e intermittent fasting which is really incredible and then another way is actually to use meditation so they took in a study
They took some experienced meditators and they checked them at baseline without meditating and then they also checked them you know right after they had been meditating and they found that their serum melatonin levels were actually much higher with these experienced meditators when they after they had just finished meditating and so um it’s a pretty powerful
Way to increase that antioxidant function and so that’s another great way to do it another way is to get morning sunlight um you know so basically when you wake up and the sun is rising it’s a really great way to increase your melatonin production it gets into the circadian rhythm which i don’t want to get into fully in this um episode but basically it tells
Your body what time of day it is and um it’s going to increase your serum melatonin levels quite a bit um over 50 and it also helps that you know that afternoon crash that a lot of us feel at that one to two mark when you’re just kind of exhausted and don’t want to continue it’s also going to reduce that afternoon crash which is really important to just feel
Great and kind of continue to keep on going another way to increase your melatonin levels is at night when it when the sun starts to go down is to be really careful about overhead lights in your house you know we all have these overhead lights and your body thinks it’s being exposed to the sun so it doesn’t want to secrete melatonin because it’s not time for bed
Yet so a simple trick you can use is to turn off overhead lights and to turn on more lamps in your home which actually is going to stimulate like a campfire feeling so if you go out camping and you know the sun goes down at eye level you have this warm hue of a campfire which um you can feel yourself kind of calming down in the evening and getting relaxed etc
And so use those lamps instead of overhead lights to stimulate melatonin as well so foods also will increase melatonin specifically and one of the biggest ones is actually tropical fruits so some of that is pineapples oranges and bananas and so what they found is they measured serum melatonin levels before and 120 minutes after eating the fruits and they found
That it increased over 50 percent so 146 versus 48 in pineapples oranges 151 versus 40 and then bananas 140 versus 42. so the serum concentration of melatonin exponentially went up and you can also use um fish and eggs as well to increase your serum melatonin levels so getting that from your food is actually really helpful as well and so make sure that you have
A properly functioning gut so that you can absorb and assimilate these nutrients and then you know not only is melatonin great for the gut but there are other benefits of melatonin um so it’s it’s a heavy antioxidant you know some argue that it is the strongest antioxidant others are nuclear defined i don’t know tomato tomato it is very important to have it it
Has anti-cancer benefits cardiovascular protection benefits insulin resistance protection so it’s an anti-diabetic as well as a neuroprotective and helping with obesity so there are a lot of mechanisms of action of melatonin so make sure that you’re making these simple lifestyle changes to get more melatonin in your life and in turn protect your gut and protect
A lot of other systems in your body so thank you so much for watching and talking and listening about melatonin levels um and if you want to hear more please let us know um and tell us hi shoot us a message and let us know what you want to hear more of we’ll talk to you soon take care bye you
Transcribed from video
These Are The 5 Ways Melatonin Affects Your Gut! – with Dr. Ann-Marie Barter | Gut Health Reset By Dr. Ann-Marie Barter