Hi there. It's Matt Walker here and welcome back to the podcast. Today is all about

the M word and before your mind jumps to any Lored M word possibilities

what I mean is that our topic de jure is melatonin. First we're going to understand what melatonin is.

Then we'll speak about how melatonin works and what melatonin does and does not do for your sleep and then finally we'll speak about melatonin supplementation.

Melatonin is a hormone and it's often called the hormone of darkness or the vampire

hormone not because it makes you look longingly at people's necklines and want to bite in simply because melatonin comes out at night.

Which brings us directly on to how melatonin actually works. Now during the day we are

hopefully exposed to plenty of natural light and as light enters your eye it will inhibit the release of melatonin and

the absence of melatonin will therefore tell your brain and your body that it's daytime and that it's time to be awake.

Fast forward to the evening and we have the arrival of darkness and

darkness releases the breaks on melatonin and so the floodgates open up and we need darkness in the evening to trigger the release of melatonin.

And as melatonin is released in the evening,

it will tell your brain and your body that it's night time

and that it's time to sleep.

The problem, however, is that in some ways we are a dark-deprived society

in this modern era, and many of us get too much artificial light exposure in the

evening which can impact on natural melatonin levels so as a tip rather than a

hack I don't really like the word hack but as a tip, rather than a hack, I don't really like the word hack, but as a tip, try to dim down half of the lights in your home in the last hour before bed and also stay away from those screens and you'll be surprised at

how sleepy this can make you feel. So that's a little bit about what

melatonin is now let's bit about what melatonin is. Now let's speak about what melatonin does and

does not do for your sleep. Melatonin helps schedule the timing of your sleep but melatonin does not significantly

change the quantity or the quality of your sleep and to better explain this

...