The Natural Solution: Melatonin for Better Sleep
Do you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep at night? When it’s finally time to lay your head on your pillow, is your mind still going and going, and it’s hard to shut it off? We all know how important sleep is to our health, so Dr. Hotze discusses an important hormone for sleep as he shares a simple, natural solution to help you finally sleep better!
Podcast Transcription
Stacey: Welcome to Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. I’m Stacey Bandfield here with Dr. Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. Thanks for joining us today. A reminder, we have our podcasts online. You can go to HotzePodcast.com. It’s H-O-T-Z-E podcast.com to download all of our programs. Alright, the vitamin that we’re going to be talking about today, it’s a vitamin but it’s also a hormone, and you take it at night. What is the hormone/vitamin, Dr. Hotze?
Dr. Hotze: Yes, it’s-
Stacey: That’s critical for health.
Dr. Hotze: Thank you, Stacey. That’s a live wire right there, isn’t it? I’m talking, you’re talking about her mitochondria producing a lot of energy today. I’m telling you what, she’s wired up. We want you to be a live wire, too. I want you to have good energy production. In order to have good energy production, you have to have good sleep.
Stacey: Yes, there’s another hint, another hint.
Dr. Hotze: The sleep hormone that God put in our body is made by the pineal gland. Pineal. It is melatonin. Melatonin is a natural sleep hormone that is really derived from a neurotransmitter called serotonin. There’s a certain enzymatic pathway and the pineal gland converts it into melatonin. Then when the lights go down, your eyes should go down. You should become tired and sleepy and go to sleep. Then when the lights go down, the melatonin’s released from the pineal gland. That has a sleep effect. We know through studies that it increases the speed at which a person goes to sleep. It increases the deepness of their sleep and the duration of their sleep. When melatonin levels are good, when you’re a younger person, I don’t know what younger is to me anymore – 50s?
Stacey: It changes as we age, what young is.
Dr. Hotze: When you’re in your 20s and 30s, you probably have pretty good levels of melatonin. But by the time 40 happens, everything in the body begins to decline, including the melatonin production. A very common presenting symptom, or one of the presenting symptoms we see here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, “I can’t sleep, I can’t get to sleep, I can’t sleep soundly, I wake up, I don’t feel rested when I do sleep.” They’re having problems with insomnia.
Stacey: It’s a funny condition, actually. They say they’re tired all the time and yet they can’t sleep.
Dr. Hotze: Part of this is the low production of melatonin. Now, we don’t measure melatonin. We know it goes down as you age and we know this can be a problem. Most individuals end up going to see their conventional doctor. What they will put you on is a psychotropic drug. They will put you on, not uncommonly, on Ambien or Lunestra, which are both benzodiazepines, which are like Valium, and they’re addictive and there are withdrawal effects to that, that create a tremendous dependency. They may put them on anti-anxiety medication like Xanax or something like that. They may put them on anti-depressants. A number of psychotropic drugs, which adversely affect the…production and the balance of the neurochemicals in your brain, which can lead to a host of problems. If our sleep patterns change as we get older, and the sleep hormone melatonin, which is made in the pineal gland and that’s the way God set it up in order to help us sleep, goes down, why would I take a chemical, especially psychotropic chemical, to put me to sleep when all I have to do is to take some natural melatonin? Oh, well, melatonin can’t be patented.
Stacey: Oh, that’s right. That is a problem, isn’t it?
Dr. Hotze: Because it occurs in nature, it can’t be patented. It is dramatically less expensive than the sleep medication, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety medications, and there’s no money in it for the drug companies. Well, when something seems inexplicable there’s always going to be a money trail, I assure you. If your doctor’s trying to pawn off on you a host of psychotropic drugs to help you sleep, just say, “Thank you, doc, but no thank you. I don’t sleep because I have low levels of Ambien in my body. I’m not sleeping well, it’s not because I have low levels of anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants in my body. Something in my body has changed.” Well, why don’t we simply replenish what’s gone down? That would be melatonin. You can take melatonin at bedtime. You might take it an hour before you go to bed. You’ll find that it’ll help you fall asleep naturally and sleep soundly. It puts me in a deep sleep because I dream when I take my melatonin, sometimes very vivid dreams. I feel fresh when I wake up. Now, how much should you take? You can find different levels, one milligram, two milligram-
Stacey: Three.
Dr. Hotze: Five, 10 milligrams, even. From what I have read, the normal production of melatonin in the body is somewhere around two milligrams. Oftentimes, less is better. By the way, it’s not toxic. They have given college students 1,000 milligrams at bedtime without any harmful side effects. Because it’s natural, you’re not going to find it having a lethal dose and a strong toxic effect whether you take five, 10, or 20 milligrams. But I found that sometimes with hormones and particularly in the case of melatonin, oftentimes less is better, one or two milligrams is often just what you may need. You can always increase it a little bit, but I think that’s where I’d start on a one or two milligram dose of melatonin at bedtime.
Why do you need that sleep? You know as well as I do, that’s the time your body rejuvenates. Your brain rejuvenates. Everything gets rewired. Your body cleans out. You’re on a 12-hour fast normally between the time you go to dinner and when you wake up the next morning. Normally between meals you have fasted about 12 hours. This is important as your body goes to sleep. Then it can begin to clean itself out of the toxins and begin to prepare you to be healthy the next day. We know that people that have poor sleep patterns as they age-
Stacey: Yes.
Dr. Hotze: We know it’s associated with a host of health problems from heart disease to high blood pressure to obesity to diabetes. Sleep has a very profound and beneficial effect in helping your body heal and recover. The best way, if you’re having problems with sleep, the best thing to do is first, instead of going to a conventional doctor and getting on a bunch of drugs you can never get off of or have a hard time getting off of, just replenish the hormone that is beginning to decline as you mature, and that would be melatonin.
Stacey: Doesn’t it decline around the age of 45?
Dr. Hotze: Somewhere in the early 40s, just like all the hormones begin to decline. The sex hormones, adrenal hormones, thyroid hormones, all begin to decline.
Stacey: It’s also considered to be an anti-aging hormone, as well.
Dr. Hotze: Right.
Stacey: Right?
Dr. Hotze: Obviously, the aging process is caused by the inevitable decline in our hormones. That’s all our hormones, including melatonin. You can imagine if you’re not sleeping well as you’re getting older, you’re not going to be well. You don’t have the beneficial effects of a restful, rejuvenating sleep, which your body needs to be healthy.
Stacey: Absolutely. Of course, you can always get melatonin at HotzeVitamins, and you can probably see on the screen the opportunity to just go ahead and click and purchase that. I would also like to encourage people for their complimentary consultation to call 281-698-8698. Very often, when people come to us, sleep is one of their problems. They’re also overweight, they are tired, they have anxiety, they have a host of health problems. You actually owe it to yourself to have a complete complimentary health consultation. Again, that’s 281-698-8698. We’re so glad you joined us today here at Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. Have a blessed day!
