Calming Pets Naturally with Melatonin

We’ve been discussing natural pet calmers, such as calcium and magnesium, lavender oil, and pheromones. Now, let’s consider melatonin, which is available over the counter and has very little potential for causing harm.

Benefits of melatonin
Melatonin is a hormone released at night while pets sleep and helps make them calmer, helps increase their level of Growth Hormone, and helps their coats grow. Some researchers feel melatonin also helps pets with cancer stay healthy longer than those not receiving this supplement.

Pets must sleep in the dark
Pets are born with the ability to make their own melatonin while they sleep, but aging brains and the environment cause the brain to secrete less melatonin over time. One of the environmental factors that decreases natural melatonin production is sleeping in lighted rooms. Night lights, television screens, street lamps all provide light that is new to bodies that spent thousands of years evolving where only the moon and stars gave light at night. Pets that slept in dens and caves didn’t even have regular exposure to this low level of moon and star light. And now, pets sleep exposed to lights from television, street lamps, and hall night lights. It’s become impossible for them to make the melatonin their bodies require.

The pineal gland
The pineal gland makes melatonin. It sits deep in the brain behind the eyes, and some refer to it as the third eye. The pineal picks up light signals from the retina at the back of the eye. When the retina signals light, it doesn’t make melatonin. When the retina signals there’s no light, the pineal makes melatonin. Making melatonin is a slow process that takes several hours to start so that melatonin doesn’t increase in our pets’ brains for several hours after they’ve gone to sleep. Production is interrupted if they sleep for a few hours, then wander around and go back to sleep. Long hours of uninterrupted darkness and sleep are necessary for melatonin production.


Melatonin dosage
Melatonin is available over the counter, but please asks your veterinarian’s advise when using it. The normal dose is 3-5 mg orally at bedtime, but the does is increased when treating pets with skin disease or cancer.

What’s coming?
We’ve looked at several natural calmers (calcium, magnesium, lavender oil, and pheromones) and in a future blog, we’ll cover Chinese herbal formulas, homeopathics, and several other calming agents.