Your suprachiasmatic nucleus communicates its repeating signal of night and day to your brain and body using a circulating messenger called melatonin.
The rise in melatonin begins soon after dusk, being released into the bloodstream from the pineal gland, an area situated deep in the back of your brain.
Melatonin acts like a powerful bullhorn, shouting out a clear message to the brain and body: “It’s dark, it’s dark!” At this moment, we have been served a writ of nightime, and with it, a biological command for the timing of sleep onset.
Melatonin simply provides the official instruction to commence the event of sleep, but does not participate in the sleep race itself.
For these reasons, melatonin is not a powerful sleeping aid in and of itself, at least not for healthy, non-jet-lagged individuals.
There may be little, if any, quality melatonin in the pill. That said, there is a significant sleep placebo effect of melatonin, which should not be underestimated: the placebo effect is, after all, the most reliable effect in all of pharmacology.
Once sleep is under way, melatonin slowly decreases in concentration across the night and into the morning hours. With dawn, as sunlight enters the brain through the eyes (even through the closed lids), a brake pedal is applied to the pineal gland, thereby shutting off the release of melatonin.
The absence of circulating melatonin now informs the brain and body that the finish line of sleep has been reached. It is time to call the race of sleep over and allow active wakefulness to return for the rest of the day.
In this regard, we human beings are “solar powered.” Then, as light fades, so, too, does the solar brake pedal blocking melatonin.
As melatonin rises, another phase of darkness is signaled and another sleep event is called to the starting line.
It starts a few hours after dusk. Then it rapidly rises, peaking around four a.m. Thereafter, it begins to drop as dawn approaches, falling to levels that are undetectable by early to mid morning.
Coach HB