Melatonin and Body Temperature

[Gittit Shwartz]

Tell me about it. I used to eat as many cruciferous veggies as I could stuff in every day for their anti-estrogenic properties. These are at the top of the list of goitrogens. In fact practically every plant food I ate regularly was on that list. No wonder my thyroid is run down

And yeah, depending on your definition, I think something like 70% of the adult population of the US is supposed to have some thyroid disorder.

[George Mounce]

Bah, I'll stick to my broccoli.

[Brian Stone]

This seemed as good a thread to jump in on this topic as any. It's been of interest to me because I recently heard that exercising at night (shortly prior to sleep) can cause sleep interruption, since your core temperature is usually elevated for 3-5 hours after intense exercise before dropping to a lower level. I also dug up this article:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Sleep-and-...tion&id=177405

I've never been a great sleeper so I've experimented with various things, but I've noticed that green tea seems to make me feel more relaxed at night and yet inhibit my ability to fall asleep, for a short while. It would seem that hot baths would have the same effect - raising core temperature, and yet I found studies that showed that, at least in the elderly, hot baths prior to sleep are effective to induce quality sleep:

http://www.journalofnursingstudies.c...023-8/abstract

Any general comment on this? Is the different induction method to raise temperature the real factor, or maybe something else?

[Steven Low]

Artificially raising body temperature is different from metabolically induced raised body temperature.

The former will drop off fairly quickly as the heat dissipates, the latter will keep going depending on how close to sleep you exercised.

This reminds me that I need to push my workouts to earlier in the day if possible as well...

[Garrett Smith]

Gittit,
If you had a positive response to melatonin, you might want to look into methylcobalamin (aka methyl-B12) injections or intranasal spray (I'm not as big a fan of the sublingual versions anymore).

See these studies for more research on this topic:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...m&ordinalpos=1
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8...m&ordinalpos=3
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8...m&ordinalpos=4

[Gittit Shwartz]

Funny this thread popped up again, I'd just sworn off melatonin completely. I've been using it a bit to get over jet lag and then to adjust my sleep schedule to get more hours of daylight. Four out of five times I wake up suddenly about 3 hours later, feeling alert and refreshed, and can't get back to sleep even as the alertness wears off. Any idea why that keeps happening? Sans melatonin I never wake up on my own before I'd been asleep at least 7 hours.

Thankfully the temperature drop isn't an issue anymore - I'm on Armour and Isocort (adrenal extract) and I think I can say I'm thriving

For sleep, I'm finding that getting a good dose of sunlight soon after I wake up, exercising before breakfast (even a light workout/yoga), and dimming the lights a couple hours before bedtime works best for me... I also take 10,000 IU of Vitamin D in the morning and 400 mg magnesium at night which seems to help. No "sleep aid" per se made much of a difference.

[Gittit Shwartz]

Thanks for the links Dr. G, I was just starting to put together some material for a review/presentation on chronotypes for school

[Brian Stone]

For the record, I haven't had positive experiences with melatonin either. I find that I wake up after about 6 hours and feel artificially alert, and/or it causes erratic interruptions to my sleep.

[Kelly Frankson]

Gittit, what have you tried diet wise for your t3?

[Gittit Shwartz]

Kelly, I'm now taking thyroid hormones (Armour Thyroid), so I can't say any dietary manipulation solved the problem.

That said, there are a few things that did help a little. Chronic low carb can impair T4 to T3 conversion - I found I felt better at about 100g per day. Plenty of Vitamin D from sunlight or supplements. Also, if you live far from the shore or eat very little seafood, you may benefit from iodine supplementation - Dr. G can tell you more about that than I.

I still don't eat cruciferous veggies (or hardly any raw veggies for that matter) because they bother my stomach, but I can't say if that's made any difference.