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.

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