Pineal Melatonin Levels Disruption on Humans Due to Electromagnetic Fields and ICNIRP Limits
Are you sleeping well at Night? If not this may be caused by low levels of Melatonin and may have a knock on effect with your health.
Melatonin is a natural hormone produced by the pineal gland. It controls the body’s sleep/wake cycle or the circadian rhythms and is activated by darkness and deactivated by light. EMF can reduce the
Various factors are involved in this, including one’s natural melatonin levels and the length of exposure to light. Within the last decade, thousands of well documented publications have reported melatonin as a naturally occurring free-radical scavenger and as an inducer of antioxidant enzymes. Melatonin promptly crosses the blood–brain barrier because of its permeability into the brain; thus, it is accumulated in the central nervous system at significantly higher levels than exists in the blood. Furthermore, it attenuates seizures and hence used in the effective treatment of juvenile intractable epilepsy.
Melatonin also interacts with the immune system which regulates the pineal gland functions. In addition, melatonin has also been identified as an effective agent that avoids both the initiation and promotion of cancer. Some evidence suggests that melatonin acts a free-radical scavenger and therefore reduced night time levels lead to cancer and other serious illnesses.
EMF and Melatonin Disruption
Although studies of melatonin disruption showed inconsistent results from different laboratories, there is a benefit of drawing attention to the significance of the exposure limits to weak EMFs. In the ICNIRP limit, the acute effects are determined by the intensity of the radiation and cumulative effects are not assumed to occur. Beside this, the above observation agrees with our earlier study in which it was confirmed that it is not a reliable method to characterise biological effects by observing only the ratio of AC magnetic field strength to frequency as the exposure duration is not included in this limit. In addition, the results also emphasise consideration of the importance of the exposure limits due to weak EMFs.
What Can You Do?
If possible all electric and electronic equipment should be removed from your bedroom including TV, clock radios and electric lamps as these emit EMF. All electric wiring should be at least 12 inches away from your bed, so this may mean sliding the bed away from the wall if sockets are near the bed head. If possible switch off electricity supply to the bedroom and maybe try a ground sheet for your bed or some other method to protect from externally generated EMF’s.
