This is well worth reading. It's rather dense and while non-conclusive on the mechanisms at work - the results are what's interesting. A common "supplement" Melatonin has been found to have multiple cancer benefits in preventing or slowing the spread of metastatic cancer, and in making treatment-resistant cancers once again sensitive to treatment.
Thoughts and comments are welcome! I think I'll visit the drugstore tomorrow...
Thanks for posting this. I skimmed the article. What's needed are clinical trials. But, since melatonin is available over the counter, I imagine the likelihood of this happening is very low.
They mentioned that in the article.. the chance of well funded studies is about nil unless one of the cancer foundations wants to cough up the $$$. It's a molecule, and can't be patented.
Stopping at the pharmacy tomorrow I think. Will discuss with my radiation oncologist - have an appointment with him tomorrow.
I've been on Melatonin MAX for about 6 months per recommendation of my COC oncologist. It's 60mg taken late evening and at bedtime. We get it from Amazon.
I’ve taken 20 mgs per night almost five years.. Under advice from a naturalpathic oncologist .. Some use 40mgs.. I was also prescribed 4.5 mgs naltrexone each night as well . I do have vivid dreams every night . Sometimes racing .. no plans to stop either ,along with 12 other nutrients .
My understanding is that LDN works best if the dose is intermittent. I do 2 days on, one day off. This is on good authority from one of the research scientists. I buy a pack of Revia 50mg for about $50 which lasts about a year.
Do we need priscription for LDN?
Any trusted online pharmacy?
He seems to argue that absorbing ROS is its (unproven) benefit - yet ROS is exactly how cancers are destroyed in our bodies. He also says it is an anti-estrogen, which may be beneficial in breast cancer, but detrimental in prostate cancer. Lots of nice pictures and hot air, but no clinical evidence. Why risk it?
Cause it also helps us sleep. Lol
Schwah
Even that is controversial:
"So why are the major sleep societies hesitant to endorse melatonin for run-of-the-mill insomnia? The American Sleep Association and National Sleep Foundation cite conflicting evidence about efficacy while cautiously suggesting that it might help some people. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) actually advises clinicians against recommending melatonin, weighing the overall evidence as "weakly against" its efficacy.
A review of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of melatonin for insomnia without significant comorbidities "suggests a modest reduction in time to fall asleep of not better than around 10 minutes, which by our definition was not clinically significant," said Michael J. Sateia, MD, lead author of the AASM recommendation. The review found that melatonin also failed to show robust improvement in other sleep outcomes.
"AASM's recommendation against melatonin does not mean that it is proven ineffective or unsafe," stressed Sateia. "It simply means that based on the rigorous standards we applied, there was insufficient evidence demonstrating its effectiveness. Moreover, our recommendation was based on the entire adult population; we were not able to conduct separate meta-analyses for the elderly population."
"That said, there are certainly studies out there that suggest melatonin may be helpful for insomnia in older individuals, perhaps especially those who have significant declines in endogenous melatonin levels associated with aging," he said. "Those data, however, also show conflicting results."
medscape.com/viewarticle/92...
I've tried it at varying doses for sleep, but it did nothing for me. I still have several bottles in a drawer somewhere, along with Kava-Kava extract pills.
See recent meta-analysis on melatonin and sleep below.
Exogenous melatonin as a treatment for secondary sleep disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Author links open overlay panelTianLiab1ShuaiJiangc1MengzhenHanaZhiYangbJianjunLvbChaoDengdRussel J.ReitereYangYangab
Show more
doi.org/10.1016/j.yfrne.201... rights and content
Highlights
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Determining the effects of exogenous melatonin for secondary sleep disorders.
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Melatonin is a physiological indoleamine used for secondary sleep disorders.
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Pooled data demonstrate that exogenous melatonin lowers sleep onset latency.
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Pooled data demonstrate that exogenous melatonin increases total sleep time.
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Pooled data demonstrate that melatonin has little effects on sleep efficiency.
Abstract
Melatonin is a physiological indoleamine involved in circadian rhythm regulation and it is currently used for secondary sleep disorders supported by empirical evidence. A small amount of evidence and some controversial results have been obtained in some randomized controlled trials (RCT). The objective of this meta-analysis is to determine the efficacy of exogenous melatonin versus placebo in managing secondary sleep disorders. Literature retrieval of eligible RCT was performed in 5 databases (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Web of Science). In total, 7 studies of 205 patients were included. Pooled data demonstrate that exogenous melatonin lowers sleep onset latency and increases total sleep time, whereas it has little if any effect on sleep efficiency. Although, the efficacy of melatonin still requires further confirmation, this meta-analysis clearly supports the use of melatonin as a management for patients with secondary sleep disorders.
Insomnia (poor sleep) is a symptom and is not a disease entity in itself. There are many conditions which can cause poor sleep...most common ones are ...anxiety disorders, depression, PTSD, alcohol or drug abuse, sleep apnea, OCD and so on.
Even things like girlfriend/wife stopped talking and is mad at you can make you sleepless .
Sleeping pill is not a real solution and all sleeping pills lose effect and are habit-forming.
The right way to solve poor sleep problem is to first of all find the cause of it...treat the condition which is causing sleep problem...and of course. .add physical exercise and practice good sleep hygiene etc.
If girlfriend/wife is mad making you sleepless.. the simple solution is ...make a cup of nice tea or coffee ..go to her ..say "I am sorry" Please drink the tea/coffee I made for you. Problem solved...enjoy sleep now.
Girlfriend stops talking? Was it something I said?? It always is. Is it too late to say I’m sorry? Never! Take care 😂
A double shot of Nespresso Kazaar does wonders for me whereas melatonin makes my legs twitch.
If the research or science is so suspect why has the National Institute of Health seen fit to include this paper in its database?
👏🏼
I posted a review of melatonin 3 years ago:
healthunlocked.com/advanced...
I still take 50mg before bed.
-Patrick
I've read that the circadian cycle of melatonin during sleep has its climax during the last third of sleep. This makes me think that the best moment to take it would be at around 4 hours after going to sleep. When you wake up at night to WC.
I am on Lormetazepam to sleep 7h because otherwise I wake up with insomnia after 4 miserable hours. So I am considering dropping LM an Go into melatonin at my insomnia wakeup
My nat dr put me on low dose 4.5 mgs of naltrexone before bed. It might ween you off of the loremetazeoam . Just a thought. Good luck 👍
I am growing several passiflora plants.
A tea of 6 leaves seems to be good for a nice sleep. But I haven't tried it yet.
I 'll read more about it . Maybe the fruit is also good for sleep.
Though the melatonin seems to have some antitumor action, and that is why it is interesting. Maybe Passiflora has some melatonin in it. I will read about this.
Interesting . Good luck ! 🎄
My kids call it synchronicity, but it amazes me how often subjects seem to arise in this forum that are on my mind. Since Thanksgiving, I have been feeling much better. I have more energy, and it has been easier to get started in the morning. Today is the 2nd anniversary of my prostatectomy. I get labs every month, consisting of PSA and Comprehensive Wellness bloodwork. December 9th PSA is down to 4.2 from 5.1 on November 4th. ALP is 66 down from a peak of 155 in June 2019, and LDH is 119 down from a peak of 175 in June. PSA peaked in May at 47.3, rising from 2.8 on January 23, 2019.
The numbers have trended nicely since beginning treatment. Nevertheless, finding out in late April that lesions appeared over the last year in numerous spots of my skeleton has caused a lot of internal anxiety. There has been a lot of difficulty sleeping. I was never great at sleeping and, for much of my life, made fun of people that needed sleep. I am 65 and believed in several macho myths for far too long.
I tried Ambien to help during the last few months, and it was OK at first, but the positive effect did not last long, and I felt it was making lethargy worse over time.
I started taking 20-30 mg of melatonin on Thanksgiving weekend. I am waking up to lace on my sneakers, get on the elliptical to head to the gym 5 times a week. I don’t know what to attribute it to, but my son coaches me to celebrate the wins. I have started to worry that testosterone is coming back to feed the monster. The December lab results eased my mind a bit, and I will put the worry about increased T on the back burner.
I remain puzzled by the energy. For now, I will consider it a benefit of better quality sleep and improving numbers. I was wondering what the downside of increasing melatonin is, and come to learn today; there might be an upside.
Yogi Berra said that baseball is 90 percent mental, and the other half is physical. I am working on an appropriate paraphrase. Today’s version is that living with Advanced Prostate Cancer is 90% treatment, and the other 90% is mental, and the other 50% is luck.
Reading this discussion, combined with others I have participated in, is very interesting. A suggestion in this string says there will not be $ devoted to creating a study on melatonin. It is an opinion, but I tend to agree. I was with a founder of a pharmaceutical company at a party. His company is working on several cancer drugs. In the discussion, a question was raised (by me) on what would happen if an inexpensive natural treatment is discovered. Would the cancer industry embrace it or kill it? I am of the mind that it would not be supported. There is too much money at stake. He said there was no question anything that could help would be supported and investigated. He probably believed what he was saying, but I doubt whether many people would be able to give up the riches from a multibillion-dollar industry.
First, Congrats on the gym...I have a Peloton in my gym at home...after 6 weeks and 42 rides with Robin (Instructor) I get up at 6:30 am on average and now go to bed at 10:30...I do drink Athletic Greens ......I lift and do my other things and then for me I have Graice (woof) I am on good ole Lupron, and Xtandi,.....I had 12 cores all Gleason 9.....I feel great all of the time....I really do...this is my second round with the monster....first one head and neck....lost 40% of my jaw.....Still flying Again.....!!! doing Angel Flights and love it and so does Gracie....Eat pretty clean but I always have....I do my best to set an example...I love to run the neighborhood in the rain and cold....Paddle Board when it is 35 degrees....my neighbors think I am crazy.......Guys Crazy if fun...and relax though I have my commercial certificate I fill in on a corporate level so the platform I we fly you will never have me announce this is your First Officer Speaking!!!! Blue Skies, Sky King and Penny. (woof)....Remember we do know intense exercise is a great benefit to our survival....!!
Woof ,woof , you’ve got it ! Great post . Thanks 🎄
I suspect the health insurance industry will soon realize it has a lot to gain if it starts funding studies into lower cost treatments. I even recall they're already looking into xgeva every three months versus every month. If they're spending billions on drugs, it makes sense to spend millions on research into how to lower costs.
A good report . Thanks ..that energy is a find . Good for you .Be well 🎄
from the article:
Among a broad cross section of experimentalists there is solid agreement that melatonin is
capable of retarding cancer progression. Yet, surprisingly, its use for this purpose at the clinical level has been remarkably sparse. This is particularly disappointing since melatonin is an endogenously-generated molecule that lacks any notable toxicity or negative side effects at virtually any dose. It seems that the lack of testing, use or promotion stems from the fact that, as an inexpensive non-patentable molecule, the financial gains associated with its use would be minimal.
In the US, the NIH continues to minimally support melatonin/cancer studies many of which show substantial cancer inhibition; yet these findings have not been translated to the clinical level.
Why risk it? The better question is why take the risk of NOT taking melatonin.
The article concludes (citations omitted, paragraph breaks added for ease of reading)
The collateral toxicity and collateral lethality of chemo- and radiotherapies are serious concerns regarding their use. The damage to normal tissues inflicted by chemotherapies are both acute and chronic.
Melatonin, in numerous experimental paradigms, has been shown to mitigate acute, normal cell damage, e.g., oral mucositis due to ionizing radiation as well as the cardio-hepatic and renal toxicity of many drugs .
Relative to chronic consequences, the cardiac damage resulting from chemotherapy administration may lead to compromised long-term heart function. Since melatonin protects the heart from multiple adverse processes, it is highly likely that chronic, life threatening heart failure may be averted.
Despite findings such as these, the application of this information to clinical situations has been questionably and possibly unethically slow.
Melatonin is essentially a non-toxic endogenously-produced molecule that is available at a
pharmaceutical grade purity for use in humans and it should be put to immediate use, or minimally, immediate testing, in situations where collateral normal tissue damage occurs. There are many individuals who could potentially benefit from such co-treatments.
(bold emphasis added)
If you are getting radiation or chemotherapy, the potential benefits of supplementing with melatonin are very large, and the potential for negative outcomes are minimal. That's a good risk balance.
Not sure if this is a good quality paper or not, but apparently melatonin can interfere with the AR-V7 splice variant that causes so much trouble in CRPC:
"Melatonin Inhibits Androgen Receptor Splice Variant-7 (AR-V7)-Induced Nuclear Factor-Kappa B (NF-κB) Activation and NF-κB Activator-Induced AR-V7 Expression in Prostate Cancer Cells: Potential Implications for the Use of Melatonin in Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer (CRPC) Therapy."
Here's another recent study. In-vitro and mouse study, nevertheless the evidence is stacking up.
Tumor Biology
Abstract 1970: Melatonin inhibits osteolytic bone metastasis through interrupting cancer cells-derived osteolytic factor and reduce osteoclast differentiation
Jyun-Lin Lai, An-Chen Chang, Po-Chun Chen and Chih-Hsin Tang
DOI: 10.1158/1538-7445.AM2019-1970 Published July 2019
ArticleInfo & Metrics
Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2019; March 29-April 3, 2019; Atlanta, GA
Abstract
Osteolytic bone metastasis is seen in lung, breast, and prostate cancer and is associated with severe complications such as bone pain, fractures and hypercalcemia. In the bone microenvironment, osteoclasts play an important role in bone remodeling and bone resorption. Metastatic cancer cells may increase osteoclast differentiation and activity by releasing inflammatory cytokines including receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand (RANKL), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin 6 (IL-6) and IL-8, leading to bone resorption and osteolytic lesions. The endogenous hormone melatonin is known to modulate bone resorption. Increasing evidence suggests that melatonin inhibits cancer cell proliferation, angiogenesis and metastasis. Up until now, the inhibitory role of melatonin in osteolytic bone metastasis has remained unclear. In In vitro study, we observed that melatonin inhibits the differentiation of precursor osteoclasts and promotes apoptosis in mature osteoclasts. We injected mice tibia with luciferase-labeled osteolytic cancer cell lines (lung cancer: A549, prostate cancer: PC-3) to establish bone metastasis. After 4 weeks of intraperitoneal injection with melatonin, IVIS fluorescence signaling indicated that melatonin inhibited tumor growth. X-ray imaging of the bone revealed an improvement in bone resorption after melatonin treatment. In In vitro melatonin also reduced RANKL protein and mRNA expression in the A549 and PC-3 cell lines. Our data indicate that melatonin improves bone mass by inhibiting the expression of cancer-derived osteolytic factors and by promoting apoptosis in mature osteoclasts. Our future investigations will seek to determine the signaling pathway involved in melatonin-regulated RANKL expression in cancer cells. In summary, our findings provide insight into the benefits of melatonin treatment in osteolytic bone metastasis.
I've used it for sleep. 1 or 2 mgs. It supposedly slows prostate cancer down.
I use 10mg before sleep along with St johns wort.
Secret to sleeping? Close your eyes............
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Friday 12/20/2019 5:32 PM EST
Read this about melatonin.
thieme-connect.com/products...
And this on prolactin
thieme-connect.com/products...
It seems that with Vitex castus-agnus berries and seeds we might fight astenia, weakness, ginaecomastia, insomnia, and help fight cancer.
I have several plants in the garden. Will raise more.
I will study this thing Vitex together with CREATINE which is also dopaminergic.
What should I do next?
Should I avoid chicken?
What should I expect at the end?
Promising new treatment for CRPC
