Mind Your Melatonin - 5 Steps to Boost Melatonin and Deep Sleep

By Dr. Taylor Krick

If your sleep cycles are disrupted, everything in your life can be disrupted. Your energy is gone, you can’t concentrate, and if this zombie state lasts long enough it can lead to serious disease. One of the most important factors in your sleep cycles is your body’s production of a hormone called melatonin, which is produced at night in a 24-hour cycle called a Circadian Rhythm. For more information, please check out our other articles and watch our webinar “How To Sleep Better.”

Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in the brain that is better known as an over-the-counter sleep aid than a powerful antioxidant with cancer-fighting effects. Known as ‘The Darkness Hormone’, melatonin production works on a natural cycle to control your sleep, and when it begins to rise in the evening it tells your body that it’s time to go to bed. If your melatonin production is disrupted, you will be wired at night and won’t be able to fall asleep and your sleep cycles will become even more disrupted. You want to maximize melatonin production AND melatonin sensitivity!

Your body’s sleep cycles are controlled in what is called your Circadian Rhythm, making your body awake and alert in the morning then tired and sleepy in the evening. These daily rhythms are regulated by hormones like cortisol and melatonin. Cortisol, which is released by the adrenal glands, is known for being your body’s main stress hormone. Cortisol should be highest in the morning and gradually fall off as the day goes on. Stress (mental, physical, chemical) throws off cortisol production and can disrupt normal cortisol rhythm, which over time will often cause someone to feel tired in the morning and wired at night, which negatively affects sleep and further compounds the problem.

Science has now discovered that Circadian Rhythms control much of your physiology, and circadian disruption is a hallmark feature of metabolic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. Over ⅓ of your genes are controlled by circadian mechanisms, and work around these mechanisms won the 2017 Nobel Prize.

Melatonin alone controls over 500 genes in your genome. Melatonin is the hormone that the brain produces to tell the body it is night and time to go to sleep, and it peaks during the night. As the sun sets and the light becomes orange and then dark, your eyes detect these changes in light (darkness) and begin to tell your body to get tired. The eyes send messages through an area called the Supra Chiasmatic Nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus and then to the pineal gland. The pineal gland then secretes melatonin into the bloodstream, which causes you to become drowsy.

It’s critical to keep your melatonin production high and your hormone sensitivity high! If anything disrupts melatonin production, your body doesn’t get fully tired and you can’t fall asleep or stay asleep.

While it can be helpful in the short-term to reset normal rhythms (jet lag as a good example), supplementing with melatonin is not the best long-term answer. What research has found is that taking supplemental melatonin doesn’t necessarily cause your body to stop producing melatonin on its own, but it does affect your hormone sensitivity - meaning your body has to try to produce more and more to have the same effect. The answer is to naturally do everything you can to boost melatonin production while eliminating anything you may be doing to interfere with melatonin. Here are 4 crucial steps to maintain healthy melatonin levels. (#4 is the most important!)

1.) EAT A MELATONIN-BOOSTING DIET

There are many healthy foods which can help maximize melatonin production, but the #1 rule to follow is to EAT REAL FOOD, because processed foods with high sugar content and damaged fats cause inflammation which decreases hormone sensitivity and causes stress on the body, which will then ultimately disrupt hormone cycles like melatonin and cortisol. Eating only real food is step #1. After you are eating a real food diet, then there are some advanced strategies you can try.

Many foods have natural melatonin content, including orange bell peppers, almonds, raspberries, and goji berries to name a few. One of the best foods to naturally boost melatonin are tart cherries, or tart cherry juice (the tart part is important! Tart cherries have 50x the melatonin that sweet cherries contain).

In a study published in 2012 in the European Journal of Nutrition, researchers supplemented people with tart cherry juice and monitored their circulating blood melatonin along with their sleep duration and quality. The group ingesting the cherry juice (the other group drank a kool-aid placebo) saw significant differences in every metric - time in bed, total sleep time, and sleep efficiency total. They also measured melatonin in the blood and found that the group taking the cherry juice had increased their circulating melatonin!1 (Be careful of spiking blood sugar before bed though!! This would NOT WORK with #5 below….)

The immediate precursor to melatonin is serotonin, the neurotransmitter known most for its effect on the mood (most antidepressants work on serotonin pathways), so another way to boost melatonin is to eat foods rich in serotonin. Many healthy foods including pumpkin seeds, strawberries, and tomatoes can boost serotonin and melatonin circulating blood levels in a single serving.

Many natural foods contain neurotransmitters - spices, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables - so the most important thing is to eat a balanced, plant-based real food diet with lots of variety, focusing on bright colors and strong flavors.

2.) EXERCISE EARLY

Exercising regularly helps modulate your body’s cycles such as sleep, stress, and temperature. Although everyone is different, there is research to support that exercising early helps boost melatonin production in the later evening. In this particular study, one group exercised in the morning, one group exercised in the evening, and the control group did not exercise. Melatonin was measured at day 1 and day 6. In this graph, day 1 are the open circles and day 6 are the closed circles.

You can see the rise from day 1 to day 6 (open to closed circles) the highest in the morning exercise group. 2

Other studies have shown that you don’t need to exercise only in the morning, but at least getting a quick workout in first thing can help reset circadian rhythms, even if you exercise again later in the day. I believe everyone is different and the most important thing is exercising regularly, but these findings could be helpful to someone trying to regulate melatonin and get their sleep cycles back on track.

3.) KEEP YOUR CORE COLD
Another body cycle that rises and falls throughout the day is your core body temperature, reaching its max during the day and its minimum at night. Thermoregulatory processes have long been shown to initiate sleep, and that is one of the mechanisms of how melatonin makes you sleepy. In fact, studies have demonstrated that when supplemented melatonin during the day (when the body is not naturally producing any) it still has the same temperature-lowering effects.3,4

Your body’s core temperature should reach its lowest during the night. In fact, abnormally high body core body temperature is associated with insomnia. For this reason, it is crucial that your sleeping environment be cold. Studies suggest a sleeping environment of between 60 and 68 degrees is optimal.

One thing you can do to manipulate your temperature is take a warm bath 90 minutes before bedtime. This will raise your core body temperature, then when you get out of the bath the drop in body temperature will stimulate sleepiness. Soak in a warm bath of epsom salts, as the Magnesium in epsom salt has also been shown to help aid sleep as well.

4.) CONTROL YOUR LIGHT EXPOSURE

Controlling the light that your eyes are exposed to is the best way to regulate and stimulate melatonin production.

Melatonin cycles are controlled by light exposure, so being exposed to the wrong wavelengths of light can disrupt melatonin production. In today’s society,-filled with sitting under artificial fluorescent lighting and staring at the screens of our devices all day - our light exposure is not natural and it leads to abnormal decreased melatonin production and disrupted sleep cycles.

Think about this - during the day the sun is bright, the sky is blue, and your body is designed to be awake. At night the sun sets, which is orange, and night falls, which is completely dark and your body goes to sleep. This is the way your body is designed!

During the day it is incredibly important to remind your eyes and brain that it is day time. One of the best practices is to watch the sunrise, but that’s not always an option for everyone. At the very least you should try to be exposed to sunlight as early as possible and be exposed as often as possible throughout the day, even if that means looking through a window. The best exposure however is real daylight hitting your eyes and hitting your skin.

Artificial light from screens and monitors produces blue light, which tells your body it is daytime and not to produce melatonin. The worst thing for your melatonin production is looking at blue or white light (LED Devices) before bed! These blue wavelengths can be easily blocked by wearing Blue Blocker sunglasses or getting a blue-blocking screen on your phone. This blocks blue light from getting to your eyes while watching TV or looking at a computer. I personally wear blue-blockers nearly every night!

Even if you are blocking the blue wavelengths, it’s important to turn off electronic devices at least 60 minutes before bed, as they are stimulatory and will keep your brain awake.

In our house we also have amber wavelength light bulbs in several lamps, and when it is getting time to wind down we turn off the lights, turn off the tv, and turn on the amber lamps.

Once in bed, you want complete and total darkness. Even a dim light or flipping on a lamp will immediately decrease melatonin production.5

5.) PRACTICE INTERMITTENT FASTING (AKA TIME-RESTRICTED FEEDING)

If melatonin is controlled by these 24-hour cellular “clocks” called circadian rhythms, what controls the “clocks”? Light exposure is a big one - the sun tells us it’s day and the lack of light (darkness) tells us it’s night, but another “external cue” is when you EAT.

Popularly referred to as Intermittent Fasting, Time-Restricted Feeding is a more accurate term, because you don’t need to restrict calories to practice TRF, you just eat during certain times and you don’t eat during certain times. Eating during a certain “window” means that the rest of the day you are “fasting” - if you eat from 10am-6pm you had an 8-hour “eating window” and a 14-hour “fasting window”. Restricting your meals to 6-10 hours of the day can help reset circadian rhythms and boost melatonin and deep, restorative sleep. In fact the team at Oura Ring (watch my Sleep webinar!) has said that blocking blue light at night and stopping eating sooner are THE TWO BIGGEST FACTORS for increasing deep sleep, based on the millions of hours of data they now have on sleep quality!

The action steps are simple - stop eating sooner. If you eat dinner at 7pm, do you have a pre-bed snack? Do you have a nightcap drink? STOP. (The #1 thing that disrupts my sleep on my Oura ring is alcohol consumption) Can you stop eating by 7pm? Can you move dinner to 5pm and be done by 6pm? The key is to eat all of your calories in a specific window, 6, 8, 10 hours and then STOP and see how your sleep changes over time. Watch our Intermittent Fasting or Time-Restricted Feeding Webinar to learn more!

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

If your sleep cycles are disrupted, the answer won’t likely come from any of these interventions alone, but rather a shift in lifestyle combining several of these tools. Putting this all together into one day’s activities could look like this:

Wake Up Early
Exercise (even if it’s quick)
Watch the Sunrise or Look at Sunlight early
Perform Stress Reduction Techniques during the day
Eat only REAL FOOD all day
Get Sunlight Exposure during the day
Stop Eating Sooner
Blue Blocking Sunglasses after sunset
Electronic Devices turned off early
Warm Bath in Epsom Salts
Sleep in a Cold, Dark Bedroom

When you begin to combine these strategies, over time your circadian rhythm will regulate itself, but it will take time. Do these things on a regular basis, and try to avoid the things that can disrupt good health like processed foods and too much stress. Melatonin production is a complex network of hormones and cycles, but when your sleep and circadian rhythms are working properly and your body can heal, regenerate, and you have energy and vitality you need throughout the day - everything gets better!

1. Effect of tart cherry juice (Prunus cerasus) on melatonin levels and enhanced sleep quality.Eur J Nutr. 2012 Dec;51(8):909-16. doi: 10.1007/s00394-011-0263-7. Epub 2011 Oct 30. Howatson G1, Bell PG, Tallent J, Middleton B, McHugh MP, Ellis J.

2. Morning and evening physical exercise differentially regulate the autonomic nervous system during nocturnal sleep in humans Yujiro Yamanaka, et al; American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology Published 1 November 2015 Vol. 309 no. 9

3. The relationship between insomnia and body temperatures.Sleep Med Rev. 2008 Aug;12(4):307-17. doi: 10.1016/j.smrv.2008.02.003. Lack LC1, Gradisar M, Van Someren EJ, Wright HR, Lushington K.

4. Thermoregulatory effects of melatonin in relation to sleepiness Kurt Krauchi et al; Centre for Chronobiology, University Psychiatric Clinics, Basel, Switzerland University Eye Clinic, Basel, Switzerland http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/publications/2006_07.pdf

5. Effects of lights of different color temperature on the nocturnal changes in core temperature and melatonin in humans.Appl Human Sci. 1996 Sep;15(5):243-6. Morita T1, Tokura H.