Melatonin And Meditation: What’s The Connection?

There are many scientifically proven effects of meditation. Some of the most interesting are the effects that involve your body chemistry. Meditation can actually stimulate hormones that are important for your health. Today we are going to focus specifically on the connection between melatonin and meditation.

In addition to the fact that meditation can help you achieve mental calm and boost your energy levels, some studies show that regular meditation increases melatonin levels in your body.

Melatonin is a hormone that helps your body regulate sleep. Your body sends more of it into your blood when you go to bed to improve the quality of your sleep.

Melatonin is produced in the pineal gland by the amino acid tryptophan. Centuries ago this gland was called the ‘seat of the soul’. In many Eastern cultures, people direct the flow of energy to the pineal gland while meditating.

What does research say about melatonin and meditation?

A research team from the University of Massachusetts examined the relationship between melatonin and meditation in 1995. This study yielded some really fascinating, important data about the link between the two.

The aim of their research was to see if there was a connection between regular, conscious meditation and an increase in melatonin levels in the body. To do that, they collected urine samples from their subjects in the middle of the night to check for 6-sulfatoxymelatonins.

This chemical is a breakdown product of melatonin, which can give us precise information about melatonin levels in the blood. Previous studies had shown that melatonin is photosensitive, but this also suggested that it may be psychosensitive.

Melatonin and Meditation

They discovered amazing things: People who meditated often had much higher melanin levels than people who didn’t meditate.

A similar study found that practicing meditation right before bedtime increased melatonin levels that night. However, it did not increase melatonin levels the following nights if the person did not meditate. This suggests that you need to meditate regularly if you want it to increase your melatonin.

Studying physiological data while people slept also gave them valuable information. People who meditated regularly spent more time in deep slow wave sleep. They had stronger theta and alpha waves and some background delta activity. They also found higher quality REM sleep.

How does it work?

Meditation helps regulate your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. In other words, it regulates your body’s cortisol and catecholamine levels. Meditation has also been shown to increase your dehydroepiandrosterone, hormones such as growth hormone, thyroid stimulants, prolactin, and of course, melatonin.

Melatonin has a hypnotic effect because it inhibits your suprachiasmatic nucleus. It also has some antioxidant and immunomodulatory effects. Not only is it an important antioxidant, it also gives you a pleasant, good feeling.

Meditation is also a good way to increase your concentration. This is not only due to the effect on your melatonin levels. It also has an impact on the precursors of melatonin, especially on substances such as serotonin and noradrenaline. In addition, it slows down the metabolism of your liver and stimulates your pineal gland.

Melatonin and Aging

Melatonin production tends to decline with age. That decrease means that your sleep pattern changes as you get older. As the years go by, your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems have much lower activity levels.

This decrease activates the autonomic nervous system. The result is a decrease in restorative properties during the time you sleep. Regular meditation, on the other hand, can decrease the activity of your autonomic nervous system while you sleep. Theta wave activity in your brain’s midline also keeps parasympathetic activity in check.

Conclusion

Based on all the studies and research we have mentioned here, you can certainly conclude that regular meditation (especially Vipassana meditation) has widespread benefits. It causes physiological changes very similar to the restorative, self-regulating functions of your sleep cycle.

If it is true that meditation can help you change the quality of your sleep, it is a tool that can have a major impact on your health and the homeostasis of your body and mind. It also allows us to better understand the sleep mechanisms of our bodies and conscious minds.