Does melatonin help prevent migraine or can it be a migraine trigger?
Thank you, Cheri
_______________________________
HI Cheri,
Good question.
Melatonin is a natural hormone secreted from a gland called the pineal gland. For the most part we can think of melatonin as the hormone that induces sleep.
Hormones can be secreted in regulated cycles or sporadically in reaction to internal and even external needs. For example, adrenalin may be secreted when we are suddenly startled or a as reaction to a normal process of the body.
Melatonin is more or less a cyclical hormone that starts to get secreted around 4 o'clock in the afternoon and is the reason we may feel let-down around that time of the day. In England it is traditionally the time for afternoon tea as a pickup.
Melatonin starts to leave the body or is actually converted to another hormone, serotonin, around 4 o'clock in the morning. It appears that this melatonin conversion process can trigger a migraine headache. For this reason many people who get migraines, often wake up around this time with a full-blown headache. So from that point of view one could say that melatonin may be the blame for a migraine.
Having said that, it is interesting to note that melatonin can also help in the prevention of migraines when used properly. Because of the phenomena mentioned above, sometimes adding a small amount of timed-released melatonin at night appears to help the conversion process in the morning and thus prevent a headache. We find this to be especially helpful when a person is also taking our Tuliv Migraine Defense product for the prevention of migraines.
To read more about how the time of day affects migraines, see Morning Migraines
Lyle
Tuliv Migraine Defense
1-866-367-5953
No comments:
Post a Comment
Ask questions about migraines or make a comments about a post.