Melatonin and Your Eyes – How Are They Connected?

Sleep is one of the most crucial processes that greatly impact a person’s productivity, cognitive health, and longevity.

While people assume that sleeping is simply a period during which the body rests, it is actually the time when the brain, eyes, and muscular system recover and reenergize for the next day.

It is safe to say that a person who gets uninterrupted or insufficient sleep during the night will have an underproductive workday, along with compromised health and a bad mood.

If you want to know why resting the eyes at night is crucial, it is because the lack of light during the late hours helps spike melatonin production, which plays a huge role in regulating the timing and pattern of the body’s healthy circadian rhythm.

Keep reading to learn about melatonin, the melatonin and eye connection, the importance of healthy melatonin production, the downsides of an interrupted sleeping pattern, and how My Blue Protector can help you sleep well.

What is Melatonin?

If you understand how the human body works, you already know how every bodily system or reaction results from some sort of hormone production.

Hormones are natural regulatory chemicals produced by different glands in the body in reaction to a change in the body’s natural levels.

For instance, when a young person’s body changes and develops during puberty, their brains trigger the release of certain sex hormones.

These hormones act as chemical messengers and travel through the individual’s bloodstream and tissue network in order to regulate the body’s natural processes.

Similarly, melatonin is a hormone produced by a person’s pineal gland and is meant to regulate a human’s natural circadian rhythm and sleeping cycle.

In general, the pineal gland will produce nearly 0.5 to 0.8 mg of melatonin from birth till the teenage years, and the exact production will vary according to a person’s diet, lifestyle, and age.

Melatonin and Your Eyes – The Connection

As explained above, hormone production is directly related to a change in the external stimuli that causes a change in the body’s internal systems. The body’s sensory organs often detect these external changes.

Since the eye is one of our most sensitive and receptive sensory organs, they act as our windows to the outside world. Here’s how your eyes can lead to melatonin production.

Light Enters the Human Eye

An eyeball is made up of layers of different highly intricate components and layers such as the lens, iris, cornea, and retina. These layers allow the reception and detection of light and enable us to view different shapes, patterns, light intensities, and colors.

Although visible light is made up of a spectrum of different wavelengths, the human eye can only properly detect and absorb blue light. Blue light has a short wavelength and carries a great amount of energy.

As blue light from the sun, an LED bulb, or a flat-screen device enters the eye, it passes through the lens and cornea to reach the retinal cells.

Light Reaches the Retina

The retina is the innermost layer of the eyeball and is made up of photo-receptive nerve cells which connect the eyeball directly to the brain.

When blue light is detected by the retina, it instantly sends nerve signals to the brain. The brain uses those signals to help create the image and color you then perceive, which is what allows you to see.

During this process, the brain is not stimulated to produce melatonin and is solely focused on enabling vision.

Lack of Light Produces Melatonin

However, when there is a lack of blue light during the night or in a darkened room, the brain reacts to the darkness by stimulating the pineal glands to synthesize and secrete melatonin – the hormone of darkness – into the blood.

The darker the external settings are, the more melatonin is produced. This is why the body normally produces the most melatonin at night.

As melatonin enters your bloodstream, it helps regulate your body’s natural timing of your circadian rhythms, which ensures that you start feeling sleepy at the right time, keeping your sleep schedule regular.

Why is it Important for the Body to Produce Melatonin at Night?

Although the role of rods and cones in the human eye is well-studied and understood, the production, function, and benefits of melatonin production are still much more recent research.

To understand the importance of melatonin production during the night, let’s first discuss circadian rhythms.

Melatonin Production Help Regulate Circadian Rhythms

The circadian rhythm refers to physical as well as psychological behavioral changes that happen during a 24-hour cycle, which makes up the body’s natural biological clock. These natural rhythms respond to the external light intensity and vary as the environment gets darker.

When there is light during the day, the natural circadian rhythms in your body will help you remain active, alert, and sharp. This will allow you to be productive during the day and will aid in healthy cognitive processes as well as memory retention.

On the other hand, when there is significantly less light during the night, these natural rhythms will allow your bodily processes to slow down and transit into a resting phase, which will help you fall asleep.

Since the presence of melatonin in your blood will immediately impact these natural circadian rhythms, you will be able to sleep properly throughout the night and will have higher energy levels and a positive mood throughout the next day.

As high amounts of melatonin production allow the person to sleep throughout the night, their cognitive function goes up, memory retention is enhanced, and any sleeping disorders are dealt with by the body.

Melatonin Production Can Help Cure Seasonal Depression

Many recent studies prove that healthy melatonin production in the body can help avoid and even cure seasonal depression.

This is the kind of depression that can impact a person’s mood and psychological health during the months when the circadian rhythms are impacted by the changes in the intensity of light.

Melatonin Production Can Boost Growth Levels

Although melatonin’s primary function is to regulate a healthy sleeping cycle, it can also offer multiple other benefits to the body.

According to one study, high amounts of melatonin during the night can help boost the production of the human growth hormone. This hormone directly impacts the production of muscle mass along with the growth of skeletal tissue.

Melatonin Production Can Improve Eye Health

If you have made it this far in the article, you now understand the deep connection between your eyes and melatonin production.

The more light your eye receives, the less melatonin is produced by your body.

However, apart from this link, many studies prove that melatonin production from supplements can help improve eye health, prevent eye diseases, and even treat severe eye conditions like glaucoma, poor visual clarity, and age-related macular degeneration.

Melatonin Production Can Help Treat Certain Stomach Diseases

Studies prove that healthy amounts of melatonin in the body can help block the excess secretion of stomach acid, improve gut health, and treat diseases like Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

Since GERD can cause intense vomiting and nausea, its treatment through melatonin can improve a person’s appetite, directly impacting their health and overall mood.

What Are the Downsides of an Interrupted Sleeping Pattern?

Sleep is an incredibly important natural process that gives the body the downtime it needs to rest and recover.

When a person has a sleeping disorder or poor melatonin production due to exposure to blue light during the night, they can suffer from the following problems:

• Insufficient sleep will affect their activeness, alertness, and productivity during the next day.
• Interrupted sleep can cause emotional stress, anxiety, and seasonal depression.
• Reduced melatonin productionwill lead to muscle fatigue, tiredness, and a decline in motor skills.
• Sleep deficiency can cause kidney diseases, heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity.

Final Thoughts – Let My Blue Protector Help You Sleep Well at Night!

According to recent medical research, light intensity affects melatonin production, which can impact people’s eye health and sleep cycle.

However, if you cannot reduce your light exposure during the night or struggle with sleeping disorders that impact your health, invest in My Blue Protector’s weighted eye mask to improve your sleep and enhance your productivity during the day.