A melatonin test can help you determine what's causing your sleep issue
Anandi Explains
Having a melatonin test before deciding to take sleep medication is vital
If you’ve been to the doctors and you’re being given sleep medication, you should consider a melatonin test before you start taking it. Sleep disturbances are often causes by an imbalance of your internal body clock and a melatonin test will tell you if you are producting melatonin at the right time of day.
Why check your melatonin levels?
A melatonin test is vital before going onto sleep medication
Melatonin imbalances are largely responsible for sleep disturbances. Stress and overwork can affect your melatonin levels as well as lifestyle factors.
Low melatonin levels are also associated with depression and the acceleration of the body’s aging process.
If you are suffering from insomnia, having a melatonin test will tell you if your sleep hormones are working properly.
Melatonin’s synthesis and secretion can be strongly influenced by day length, artificial illumination, electromagnetic energy, exercise, seasonal changes and aging. Since synthesis and secretion are easily disrupted, accurate assessment of levels and circadian rhythm is critical.
Once the imbalances have been identified, the results can be used to design and implement a therapeutic programme to improve melatonin production.
Check out my blog about a real life case here
Sleep deprivation is intimately connected to mental health. Harvard have an interesting article on sleep and mental health.
What does it include?
What happens when you book a melatonin test?
When you book a test you’ll be sent a kit from the laboratory. All the instructions you need to perform the test efficiently are included in the kit.
Once you’ve done the test as instructed, you’ll need to send it back to the laboratory and they will go through their procedure and inform Anandi when the results are ready.
Anandi will then send you an invitation for a follow up call to discuss the results and next steps.
The role of melatonin
Melatonin is synthesized within the pineal gland from tryptophan (which you get from food) during the dark phase of the day.
Melatonin’s role is to:
- Orchestrate the complex interactions between the mind, body, and environment
- Influence most of the autonomic, hormonal, and behavioral functions of the human organism
- Advance sleep time and duration
- Modulate annual and circadian biorhythms (thereby reducing symptoms of jet-lag)
- Regulate the body temperature
- Regulate cardiovascular function
- Regulate immune function
- Act as an antioxidant
