On Sat, 09 Sep 2000, you wrote:
> Pure speculation that a massive overdose is very unhealthy, since no damage
> seems to occur no?
>
> I have taken melatonin for its antioxidant, brain protecting effects, I
> stopped because there is some evidence that it suppresses GH release
While the chemical toxicity is extremely low (i.e. it is very difficult to
poison yourself in any meaningful way), it does have some odd physiological
effects that haven't been fully explained, particularly when the dosage is
high.
For example, a doc told me that large doses of melatonin (75mg) have been
shown to prevent pregnancy in women, though as far as he was aware a
mechanism was not known as to why this is. He also said that there was no
real evidence of toxicity at this level of intake, if you discount strange
but apparently harmless things such as making women temporarily infertile.
What *is* clear is that science only has the faintest idea of how
melatonin is actually used by and interacts with the body, so caution is
appropriate.
Incidentally, I find "antioxidant" as a generally poor excuse to take
something. A fair percentage of all chemicals that have been described by
science could be characterized as "antioxidant" in nature, and most are
toxic. It is akin to when food companies started putting big "cholesterol
free" stickers on all their vegetable base products, with the apparent
implication that someone else was making orange juice or cold cereal
with a ton of cholesterol in it. Or when health food companies fortify a
food product with a couple common vitamins, but use longer technical names
and tout it as having some type of scientifically engineered supernutrient
that is unique to their product (actually, my favorite is the number of
clever names they come up with for "starch" in their ingredient lists).
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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