Wednesday, November 06, 2013

EMFs Effect on Melatonin

Brain and MelatoninYou may not be able to see electropollution, but your body responds to it as though it were a cloud of toxic chemicals or a glass of water contaminated with heavy metal.  Invisible or not, poison is poison wouldn’t you agree?
This pollution causes damage to your cell membranes and creates reactive molecules called free radicals that cause so much damage to our bodies that most scientists now think they are the cause of everything from Alzheimer’s to aging and premature death.  But new research suggests it is more insidious than we could have imagined:  this invisible pollution not only creates free radical damage, it reduces the body’s ability to heal itself from that damage.
It does it in part by suppressing the body’s production of important antioxidants.  One of those is melatonin, which is also a hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle.
Dozens of studies have found that even low levels of electromagnetic frequencies or fields EMFs can depress the body’s production of melatonin.  Created by the pineal gland, a small pinecone-shaped gland the size of a pea buried deep inside the brain, melatonin is more than just your body’s own alarm clock, linked to insomnia and jet lag.  Called the Dracula hormone because its production peaks at night, its role in protecting us from disease was first noted when studies began finding that night workers experienced higher rates of breast cancer than those who held down nine to five jobs.  Now we know that the hormone can increase the effectiveness of the body’s own killer cells called lymphocytes, which can fight off the foreign invaders, like mutated cells, it encounters.  It doesn’t just help you sleep- it potentially saves your life.  This is one remarkable chemical.
Melatonin bolsters your immune system in another critical way.  It increases the antioxidant activity of two powerful chemicals, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase, that occur naturally.  SOD, which is also an anti-inflammatory, helps repair cells, specifically the damage they incur form the most common free radical in the body- superoxide.  Recent studies suggest a link between low levels of SOD and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a fatal condition of the nerve cells of the brain  and spinal cord, leading to total paralysis and eventually death.  Significantly, research has traced a connection between ALS and occupational exposure to EMFs.  One study done by the Danish Cancer Society, found a clear association to this disorder.  The missing link might be melatonin. To learn more about inflammation diseases.
The pineal gland is also a supplemental source of thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), which the body uses to create thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). The antioxidant hormone melatonin also stimulates TSH, creating thyroid hormones that control your metabolism.  It’s long been known that radiation zeroes in on the thyroid gland as though it were painted with a target.  The reason: the thyroid needs iodine from the bloodstream to produce the hormones that regulate your energy and metabolism.  But it cannot distinguish between normal iodine and radioactive iodine.  It will absorb whatever is there, which is why every good radiation protection kit contains iodine tablets.  After the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, exposed children started developing thyroid cancer sooner and in large numbers than scientists expected.  The rate of thyroid cancer rose an astonishing 2400 percent!  But in nearby Poland, where government medical officials distributed potassium iodine pills to protect residents from the airborne radiation from the meltdown, there was no corresponding rise in thyroid cancers.  It will be interesting to hear what comes from Japan’s nuclear incident.
There is evidence that even low-level radiation may have an effect on the thyroid.  Studies in rats have found that exposure to both 50 Hertz (European electrical system) and 900 MHZ (cell phones) EMFs electromagnetic fields decrease the production of the thyroid hormone, a marker of hypothyroidism, which can cause fatigue, cold intolerance, depression, muscle cramps, joint pain, weight gain, low heart rate, and constipation.  It can also adversely affect your cholesterol, elevating levels of bad cholesterol-LDL-that can raise your risk of heart disease.
Melatonin is also one of the most highly potent antioxidants itself- five more times more powerful than vitamin C- which protects cells from DNA damage caused by free radicals.  There is evidence that melatonin reduces the damage to blood vessels that leads to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), lowers cholesterol, and may help reduce risks of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s by preventing the death of neurons (nerve cells that help carry messages throughout the body’s electrochemical communication system).
There is persuasive evidence that, in both animals and humans, EMFs not far above the frequency of earth’s ambient EMF alter melatonin production.  A german study focusing on residents who lived near a recently installed mobile phone tower detected lower levels of both melatonin and serotonin in blood samples taken from the participants when compared to smaples that had been taken before the tower was operational.  IN fact, 84 percent of the study group  had massive decreases in serotonin and, not surprising, nearly all reported symptoms including depression, lethargy, listlessness, lack of appetite, and agitation.  About 54 percent had lower levels of nighttime melatonin and suffered from sleep disturbances-most woke up between two and four am and had trouble getting back to sleep, problems similar to those reported by older people with naturally declining melatonin.  They also reported feeling tired and unable to concentrate the next day.
All those symptoms were described by Soviet scientists in the 1950s as signs of “radio wave sickness”, a condition found mainly in radio and radar operators exposed to RF or microwave fields produced by their equipment.  Not only that, but other studies have found that both animal and human blood cells exposed to both RF and ELF’s showed a decrease in the activity of SOD.  In the case of the human blood cell research, the hampered activity was seen after only one minute of exposure! Studies done at the Cancer Therapy and the Research Center in San Antonio Texas, that our body’s defenses are weaker after exposure to EMFs.  Human cancer cells grow twenty four times faster than cells that have not been exposed to EMFs and how “greatly increased resistance to destruction by the cells of the body’s defense system.

The GIO Indoor Grounding Earthing kit assists with sleep and has been shown to reset the melatonin among other functions in the body. To read scientific research on grounding earthing read here.
Excerpts taken from the book Zapped written by Ann Louise Gittleman. 
http://www.grounditout.com/articles/emfs-electromagnetic-fields/emfs-effect-on-melatonin.html

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