Melatonin: what analysis is carried out for this hormone?

Every sec­ond in our body, a huge amount of a vari­ety of chem­i­cals nec­es­sary to main­tain life is formed. One of them is mela­tonin, also called the sleep hor­mone. What is this con­nec­tion? In this arti­cle, we will talk about the func­tions of mela­tonin, what analy­sis is car­ried out to deter­mine the lev­el of this hor­mone, nor­mal indi­ca­tors and devi­a­tions from the norm.

What is melatonin?

Mela­tonin is a sub­stance syn­the­sized by the pineal gland, or pineal gland. It is the main reg­u­la­tor of the cir­ca­di­an, or cir­ca­di­an, rhythms of the body. What are cir­ca­di­an rhythms? So called cyclic changes in the sever­i­ty of var­i­ous bio­log­i­cal process­es, depend­ing on the change of day and night.

The main tasks of this hor­mone are:

• main­tain­ing a nor­mal lev­el of blood pres­sure;
• adap­ta­tion to chang­ing time zones;
• acti­va­tion of immune process­es;
• main­tain­ing the prop­er func­tion­ing of the endocrine sys­tem;
• reg­u­la­tion of men­stru­al cycles in women;
• antiox­i­dant activ­i­ty, etc.

Prop­er pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin is also extreme­ly impor­tant for preg­nant women. In 2014, sci­en­tists from the Research Insti­tute of Obstet­rics, Gyne­col­o­gy and Repro­duc­tol­ogy named after. BEFORE. Otta pub­lished a work in which it was found that mater­nal mela­tonin, pen­e­trat­ing eas­i­ly to the fetus, plays a key role in the func­tion­al devel­op­ment of its cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem and the for­ma­tion of cir­ca­di­an rhythms of vital activ­i­ty.

Why is this sub­stance called the sleep hor­mone? This is due to the fact that the most active pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin occurs at night (the peak occurs at two in the morn­ing).

Blood test for melatonin

The mate­r­i­al for analy­sis for mela­tonin is venous blood. Sali­va is also suit­able for deter­min­ing the lev­el of this sub­stance in the body.

In the study of blood, the enzyme immunoas­say method is used, sali­va — the method of liq­uid chro­matog­ra­phy-mass spec­trom­e­try.

Such a study is pre­scribed if a per­son has:

• cer­tain sleep dis­or­ders;
• emo­tion­al dis­or­ders;
• prob­lems with the men­stru­al cycle;
• mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis;
• patholo­gies of the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem;
• endocrine dis­or­ders.

In addi­tion, this analy­sis is indi­cat­ed when tak­ing med­ica­tions con­tain­ing mela­tonin.

How to pre­pare for research? The day before the test, you should stop drink­ing alco­hol, drinks con­tain­ing caf­feine. Blood sam­pling is car­ried out on an emp­ty stom­ach. Approx­i­mate­ly half an hour before the exam­i­na­tion, it is rec­om­mend­ed to refrain from smok­ing, exces­sive phys­i­cal exer­tion, psy­cho-emo­tion­al stress.

Norm and deviations from the norm

The nor­mal day­time con­cen­tra­tion of mela­tonin in the blood is from 8 to 20 pg / ml, at night — from 70 to 150 pg / ml.

An increase in the con­tent of this sub­stance can be observed with men­tal dis­or­ders, for exam­ple, with schiz­o­phre­nia or depres­sion, endocrine dis­or­ders, for exam­ple, with an increase in the func­tion­al activ­i­ty of the pineal gland, as well as with some oth­er patholo­gies.

A decrease in mela­tonin is char­ac­ter­is­tic of a pro­nounced defi­cien­cy of vit­a­mins and min­er­als, liv­er dis­eases, tumors of the pineal gland, and so on.