Hear the word melatonin and chances are you think it’s something to only help those who have problems sleeping. Truth be told, melatonin is a very powerful anti-inflammatory and can lower one’s risk of getting breast, lung and prostate cancer.

People are always looking to improve themselves and always wanting to know something that is really good for them but this is one that slips by people. Melatonin is a nutrient and hormone that is naturally produced by your pineal glands. It’s even produced in your intestinal tract a little bit. Its purpose is not to put you to sleep but to fight free radicals and inflammation.

Melatonin not only lowers the risk of neurological deterioration but also reduces significantly systemic inflammation. That means basically free radicals that are damaging cells long term start causing waxing and waning scar tissue and depending on the damaged cells, whether they want to become cancerous or toxic or inoperable. What happens is melatonin has a huge impact on reducing the damage done by free radicals as far as reducing them or lowering the risk of various types of systemic inflammation.

What’s also great about melatonin is it fights brain aging. It stops neurological deterioration. It protects lipids and proteins, which is critical with brain aging, and stops free radical damage, restores brain tissue and reduces brain inflammation.

Melatonin has the ability to strengthen  neurotransmitter capacity, help create electrical impulses and also redirect electricity to stimulate parts of the brian that have been inactive, in return bringing  better cell-to-cell communication.

So what does this mean? This means the possibilities for Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and brain cancers like glioblastoma are reduced. Melatonin lowers the risk of breast, lung and prostate cancer. Studies have shown a 34% reduction of these cancers in trials.

When people think of melatonin, they think between one and three milligrams are sufficient but 20 mg a day is really a great way for us to protect ourselves from all of the free radical issues, toxins and chemicals and all kinds of cell damage.

The usual suspects help you produce more melatonin: less stress, a balanced lifestyle, exercise — but not excessive exercise because if you wear down your adrenals you’re less likely to produce more melatonin. If you burn out your adrenals, you’ll actually use up your melatonin storage and have a harder time producing it so you don’t want to do excess exercise or excess living.

What I enjoy the most about melatonin as far as its benefits is it stops angiogenesis, or the formation of new blood vessels growing out of tumors. Angiogenesis is critical when it comes down to cancer and it’s that blood vessel growth that gets us into trouble.

And if that wasn’t enough, melatonin also prevents harmful forms of estrogen from stimulating cancer or cell growth.

With so many people still hurting in today’s economy, one of the plusses about melatonin is its affordability. You can buy 20 mg of melatonin a day for $11 a month. It comes in capsules and there are a multitude of brands available such as Pure Encapsulations, Thorne and Source Naturals.

You don’t want to take excessive amounts of melatonin.  You can get too much of everything. Anything between 5 and 20 mg of melatonin would be fine. There are very few side effects. Melatonin has been used for sick babies, including newborns with blood infections. That’s how non-evasive melatonin is.

Now that you’ve been awakened to the additional benefits of melatonin, don’t sleep on this useful information.

Joan Valentine - A Foundation for Natural Cures, Inc. - Provides education and integrative medicine solutions to those suffering from cancer and their families.

Many of us grew up being told an apple a day keeps the doctor away and these days we’re told to eat certain berries because they’re loaded with antioxidants. As important as we’re told fruit is to our overall health, experts debate whether it works for or against people who are sick.

Dr. Brian Clement has spent more than three decades studying nutrition and natural health care. As co-director of Hippocrates Health Institute, the preeminent leader in the field of natural and complementary health care and education since 1956, recommends that those who participate in his Life Transformation Program decrease their fruit if they are sick. He made the decision more than 30 years ago when he removed all types of sugar, including carrot juice and beet juice, from the diets of four people who had cancer and allowed four other people  to have fructose so he could monitor the effects.

“We saw radical improvements in people (who were banned from having fructose) and people who were not getting well before started to get well,” he said.

After that, he was convinced that fruit didn’t have any place in the diet of sick people.

“When we first said this, can you imagine what a hard sell it was?” he asked. “We had to tell people, ‘You have to give up meat. You have to give up dairy. You have to give up cooked food and by the way you can’t eat fruit either when you’re sick.’

Yet Medical Medium Anthony William, who for over 20 years has devoted his life to helping people heal and overcome illness and disease, says fruit is a necessity because of the glucose. He’s says take fruit away from people and they will get their sugar elsewhere.

At a recent meeting at the home of Dianne Burnett, the two discussed the subject. Clement used to devour fruit but now describes himself as a recovering sugar addict and eats very little fruit. He recalled a chat on an airplane with a university professor whose expertise was horticulture and agriculture. The educator told him that the average fruit today has 30 times more sugar than the original fruit and that 85% of the fruits we eat today weren’t here 100 years ago. He learned that the Honeybell oranges he loves so much are a hybrid of tangerine and grapefruit. And he found out that his favorite apple has 50 times the amount of sugar that it originally had when it was sourer than a crab apple.

“When you’re healthy,” Clement says, “we’ve determined through a lot of studies, (that) up to 15% of your diet is ripe, organic fruit.”

The problem is fruit is not picked ripe because if it was then shipped it would spoil before it reached consumers. He says the only fruit that ripens after you take it from a plant or mother tree is a banana because of its enzymes. He cautions against eating fruit that is not ripe. “I believe it is worse for you than even the sugar because it sucks nutrients out of the bones and cell structure,” Clement says.
After what he calls 30 years of solid, evidential science, he is firm that there is no place for fruit in the diet of people who are ill. William disagrees though as their dialogue below shows, the two do concur on some things.

BC: You have to be a Nazi on this one. “You don’t touch fruit. You don’t look at fruit.”I even say, “You don’t even walk on the same side of the street as fruit.” People make all these stories that have no bearing on reality like if you mix greens with fruit, which you shouldn’t do to begin with, it balances it out. That’s not true. Sugar is sugar. You don’t evaporate the fructose that’s in there. … There is no difference between high fructose corn syrup and mango fructose – just higher amounts.

AW: When it’s separated there is no difference. When it’s in the fruit itself, everything changes. There’s something that happens that we can’t put science to. In my experience, if you take fruit away from someone they have to get their sugar somewhere. Where are they going to get it? If someone is sick, they need sugar because your heart runs on glucose. Your brain runs on glucose. It’s a tough call.

You have to go with grains. If you go with grains, you want them sprouted. It’s safer. Not everybody is going to do that all of the time. They are going to go for cooked grains. Cooked grains feed cancer, in my opinion, faster than any fruit will. But at the same time fruit is dangerous when you have too much fat in the blood. Brian’s right. Fruit will be a problem. If you’re sick, fruit could feed problems when fats are through the roof though. That’s when you get the insulin resistance. That’s when the oxygen is out of the blood. You’ve got your blood fat up high. You’re eating fruit. You put sugar and fat together you’ve got ice cream. (That’s) not good for you. You take the fat and bring it down and you can bring more fruit up. You’ve got to have a lot of plant protein though. But you’ve got to bring your fat down really low.

I notice that people with lupus, all of the different Epstein’s Barrs, shingle viruses, meningitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, MS, whatever they have, you take the fat down to the bottom – and that’s plant fat too – even avocado – then you can bring more fruit up. But someone is going to grab a cookie if you can’t get some sugar in there. You don’t want them grabbing a cookie so you want to grab some fruit so you keep the fat down. You get results from that. That’s when the results come, cancer included.

BC: You’ve got to be cautious if you give people one piece (of fruit). Where are they going to get ripened fruit? It’s non-existent. Are they going to stop at one piece of fruit? I know I wouldn’t have at one point. Lettuce has, if you eat adequate amounts, all of the amounts of glucose your body needs.

AW: Especially butter (lettuce). I put a lot of people on heads and heads of butter lettuce. They can get their fuel from that.

BC: Exactly. We can’t talk about the difference between biology and psychology. Psychology, all of us would eat sugar until …AW: The cows came home. Look at dairy. Look at lactose. People think they’re eating dairy products. They think they’re sugar-free. That’s amazing. If you’re eating dairy, you’re eating plenty of sugar.

What both men agree on is the need for all to eat healthy.

“Food is the greatest example of how much we care or do not care for ourselves,” Clements says. “It’s about self-worth and value. Food is just really a fuel. Just eat the right food and food doesn’t become an issue anymore. Then you go on to do the real work and have a life.”

Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Joan Valentine - A Foundation for Natural Cures, Inc. - Provides education and integrative medicine solutions to those suffering from cancer and their families.