On Saturday, January 06, 2001 4:56 AM Anders Sandberg asa@nada.kth.se wrote:
> > Yes, it does work for most people. My mom takes 3mg a night and it works
> > pretty well for her. And it's a great, cheap anti-aging supplement.
>
> I don't really buy the anti-aging claims. Yes, it is an anti-oxidant
> and has helped mice. But so has a lot of other stuff, the important
> question is whether there is good evidence that it has a significant
> effect on the aging process itself (and not just on the symptoms or
> other confounding variables) and that it works in humans in that
> respect. There seems to be very scant evidence for that right now. I'm
> not ruling out that melatonin could have beneficial aging effects, but
> it is hardly a magic bullet.
Nothing is a magic bullet. Well, not that I'm aware of.:)
I suspect some of melatonin beneficial affects are indirect. E.g., getting
a good night's sleep is overall a good thing to do -- releases HGH, lowers
stress, seems to help mental function, tunes immune response. Perhaps
melatonin just facilitates these things.
At least, melatonin appears to have no serious bad affects and is relatively
inexpensive.
Dreamily,
Daniel Ust
Read more of my nonsense at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:16 MDT