Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
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Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
1–10 of 132 posts
Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#2I know a lot of people who take melatonin to fall asleep. Trying to understand if that's good or bad here?
Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#3I know a lot of people who take melatonin to fall asleep. Trying to understand if that's good or bad here?
Don’t see anything bad mentioned here.
TLDR: Animals with damaged pineal glands have trouble growing hair. Melatonin supplement helps reverse this. Topical melatonin reduces UV damage to the skin and can promote hair growth.
Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#4I know a lot of people who take melatonin to fall asleep. Trying to understand if that's good or bad here?
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Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#5Tangentially I'm interested to know whether taking melatonin for long periods of time (years) reduces its effectiveness. I've been taking it for nearly a year but I've heard stories about how you need to keep increasing the dose to get the same effect.
Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#6I know a lot of people who take melatonin to fall asleep. Trying to understand if that's good or bad here?
>Melatonin administration has been found to increase hair growth in a variety of mammals
>In a randomized double-blind study of 40 women with hair loss, melatonin solution applied to the scalp increased hair growth significantly relative to placebo
Seems like a positive. The article is suggesting that by helping regulate the circadian rhythm, the use of melatonin can potentially: extend lifespan, prolong fertility, reduce cancer incidence, reduce obesity and insulin resistance, improve neurological recovery from brain injury, improve skin resistance to damage (such as from UV rays) and increase hair growth.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to affect male pattern hair loss.
Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#7I know a lot of people who take melatonin to fall asleep. Trying to understand if that's good or bad here?
According to the article, you may be getting more hair and be less susceptible to sun damaged skin. What isn't clear is whether or not taking melatonin orally at typical dosage (300 mcg to 5 mg) will have those effects in humans. It seems that most of those human studies used topical application, and several of the animal studies used melatonin implants. Also, here is a quote from one of the references (Kleszczynski and Fischer, 2012):
> Regarding clinical application, exogenous melatonin should rather be used topically than orally, since orally administered melatonin appears in rather low levels in the blood due to prominent first-pass degradation in the liver, thus limiting skin access. Topical application might be meaningful, since melatonin can penetrate into the stratum corneum and build there a depot due to its distinct lipophilic chemical structure. Therefore, endogenous intracutaneous melatonin production, together with topically applied exogenous melatonin or metabolites can be expected to represent one of the most potent antioxidative defense systems against UV-induced skin aging.
Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#8Tangentially I'm interested to know whether taking melatonin for long periods of time (years) reduces its effectiveness. I've been taking it for nearly a year but I've heard stories about how you need to keep increasing the dose to get the same effect.
I have chronic insomnia, I had it all my life. I used to use melatonin but yes over time it lost its effect and melatonin is not one of those drugs you can just take more to sleep. It has a very precise dosage and if you take more it doesn't make you more sleepy.
If you have chronic insomnia, you need to solve the root cause. In my case it is anxiety, and currently I'm trying to solve my anxiety and my sleep quality improves as a corrolary.
Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#9Tangentially I'm interested to know whether taking melatonin for long periods of time (years) reduces its effectiveness. I've been taking it for nearly a year but I've heard stories about how you need to keep increasing the dose to get the same effect.
It lost effectiveness after a few months for me. On top of that, it gives me very restless legs, to the point that it can actually be harder to fall asleep :/
Re: Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair
#10Tangentially I'm interested to know whether taking melatonin for long periods of time (years) reduces its effectiveness. I've been taking it for nearly a year but I've heard stories about how you need to keep increasing the dose to get the same effect.
Indeed melatonin supplementation causes tolerance development. The correct dose to avoid it is 0.3 mg [1].
Nevertheless I'm glad pharmacies sell pills with much higher dosage - you can just buy the 2-10mg pills, crush them and take the dose you need. I bet they would sell 0.3 mg pills for the same high price if they knew.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...