![]() It's made in the pineal gland, a pinecone-shaped structure located deep in the brain. "In lower vertebrates like the frog, the pineal is in fact a third eye - it’s a light-dark receptor," Dick Wurtman, a MIT cognitive scientist who help discover melatonin's function in humans, says. Scientists once assumed that it had served a function in mammals but had become a vestigial organ, bound to "disappear in a few million years," Wurtman says. Life Science Databases / Wikimedia Commons In this animation, the pineal gland is highlighted in red. In the 1960s, Wurtman and his team at MIT found that light does still reach the pineal in mammals - through the eyes - and controls the release of melatonin. During the day, melatonin is inhibited by light. At night, it flows into the bloodstream - unless we're around bright light or blue light, which suppress the release of melatonin, and keep us up. When it does reach the bloodstream, melatonin acts as a messenger. How the body responds to the message depends on the animal. Rats, for instance, are nocturnal, so melatonin may play a role in keeping them awake. In humans and other day-dwelling creatures, it prepares the body for rest and helps maintain that rest throughout the night. In humans, melatonin is thought to promote sleep in two ways.ġ. ![]() The exact pathway isn't well understood, but it's believed melatonin broadly suppresses the areas of the brain involved in wakefulness. Melatonin may also play a role in lowering body temperature, which is needed for sleep.Ģ. Melatonin helps set the overall pace of the master circadian clock in the body. Scientists have shown that when people are given melatonin in the afternoon, their body clocks can be tricked into thinking it's later, and they get sleepier sooner. This can be handy if you're suffering from jet lag, and your body thinks it's still in an earlier time zone. ↑ Phone, Address, Email – Top of the Page ↑ Lightsmith was created in 1994 by Michele Mayama and Chris LaFontaine to offer clear information and helpful assistance for this time of fundamental change in our lives and world. We consider the current challenges on earth as a birthing process, thrusting us out of an old reality into something profoundly new. We see humanity moving into a different experience of life, born of the fusion of Love, Life and Light while an old world reaches the end of its time, self-extinguishing through choices made in fear, contraction and limitation. ![]() Our focus is assisting the process of transitioning between these two worlds, which some call the great shift. The stories about these times can seem abstract or metaphysical, but the effects are very real in our lives. What we provide is grounded in ways that assist integration of the changes, with processes that are expertly facilitated, experiential and powerfully effective. ![]() Our site is also a storehouse of information with dozens of pages of perspectives about this intense time of change along with hundreds of helpful responses to questions asked by our readers. ![]()
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