NOTE: This Message was originally addressed to Tom Mckeever
      from Bollenbach@apollo.commnet.edu and was forwarded to you by Tom 
Mckeev
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From:         Eddie Bollenbach 
To:           Multiple recipients of list POLIO 
Date:         Thu, 18 May 1995 20:51:33 -0400
Subject:      Richard Bruno, melatonin, and the pineal gland
 
A few months ago I recommended melatonin, a natural brain hormone produced
in the pineal gland, to help people who were having trouble falling or
staying asleep. The hormone is widely available in natural food and health
stores and is non-toxic. Unlike the benzodiazapine tranquilizers, like
valium, it does not depress breathing and is therefore safe for people
with PPS. Also, unlike many sleep inducing drugs, it does not alter the
normal cycle of sleep stages. It induces natural sleep.
 
There is an article about melatonin and its potential benefits in the
May 13 edition of Science News. I thought some of the people on the
List would be interested in this because it may have some implications
for some of the problems we face.
 
The Pineal gland is located in the center of the brain and it secretes
melatonin at night. Dusk or darkness trigger its release and sunlight
inhibits it. But it doesn't just regulate the body's clock. It seems to
function in a number of other ways to enhance vitality and health.
 
Richard J. Wurtman and his colleagues report in the May Clinical
Pharmacology and Therapeutics journal that "very tiny doses" of melatonin
work to induce sleep and combat insomnia, particularly in the elderly.
This article reminded me a bit of Richard Bruno's hypothesis regarding
polio's after effects on the brain. Wurtman says that over time the
pineal gland becomes calcified and fails to release as much melatonin
as it does in the younger brain. He thinks that this may be one reason
why many older people have difficulty getting a good nights sleep. I
wondered, if Richard's ideas are correct ( I think he would admit the
need for more proof, perhaps through the use of enhanced brain imaging
techniques, or by post mortems of post polio patients with minimal fatigue
and brain symptoms), and if the original polio infection affected the pineal
gland, (I have no knowledge if this is true...Is it Richard?) the cause of
some post polio sleep disturbances might be related to pineal gland
hyposecretion (less than normal secretion of melatonin).
 
Walter Pierpaoli of the Biancalana-Masera Foundation for
the Aged in Ancona, Italy has done studies with melatonin which show that
when it is administered to old mice, the hormone reversed some of the
age related shrinkage of the thymus gland. Last year Pierpaoli and others,
in the Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, showed that the pineal
gland plays a part in regulating the "rate at which the body ages." They
transplanted pineal glands from the brains of young mice into older mice.
If you transplant a 4 month old pineal gland into an 18 month old mouse
the mouse's life span increases by 1/3. If the transplant goes the other
way the younger mouse shows a commensurate decrease in life span.
Pierpaoli states that: "we start aging in the pineal gland." He believes
the pineal gland is the "aging clock" and that melatonin translates its
timekeeping pulses into body changes. He believes that melatonin
supplementation may compensate for aging pineals.
 
Russel J. Reiter of the University of Texas Health Center believes that
melatonin plays a key role in aging too, but by a different mechanism.
His data suggests the chemical is one of the most potent free radical
scavengers around. An excess of free radicals (reactive chemicals with
unpaired electrons which react with and slowly create morbid changes in
tissue) have been linked to the chronic diseases that tend to accompany
aging. He has done research with radiation which clearly shows that
melatonin supplements prevent the normal damage to tissue that radiation
can cause. The lack of adequate melatonin may result in accelerated
aging of the brain tissue, or even produce some of the kinds of
lesions Richard Bruno reports in post polio patients. These same kinds
of lesions, seen with MRI, are clearly associated with the normal aging
brain.
 
Anyway, melatonin is non-toxic, works well for sleep, may prevent age
related damage, and may.....I have absolutely no evidence at all for
this...be hyposecreted by the pineals of post polio patients. I'd be
interested to hear Richard Bruno's comments on this stuff. It seems
a rather interesting topic to me.......................Eddie
 * WCE 2.01á4/2037 * Not breaking the rules, just testing the elasticity..
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