Melatonin and Cancer
When we talk of cancer, we have to leave specific claims to pharmaceutical companies and oncologists. Cancer, being the complicated system of diseases that it is, we can only make some general statements about what can increase or decrease your risks of cancers of different types.
To increase your risk of cancer you just have to ignore some basic health advice and take up smoking, and/or chewing tobacco, live next to a lithium or asbestos mine, live next to a nuclear testing facility (Santa Susana, for example) eat as many cold cuts with as many nitrates possible, avoid yellow and green vegetables, don’t spare the pesticides and herbicides in your food and avoid dietary supplements.
Now that I've got that out of my system, we can talk of supplements that can lower your risk of getting cancer. Too bad we can’t offer a guarantee but you are probably old enough to how life works and that absolutes are rare indeed.
We are big on some basics like vitamin C, vitamin D, gut health, glutathione support (NAC and ALA) and some less knowns like tocotrienols and melatonin.
Melatonin is the subject of many studies and its anticancer properties. Melatonin is also known as N-acetyl-5-methoxy-tryptamin or MLT.
Melatonin is secreted from the pineal gland, especially at night. Melatonin is highly involved in circadian rhythms. It also demonstrates antioxidant, anti-aging, immunomodulation as well as anticancer properties.
Studies indicate that melatonin has significant apoptotic, angiogenic, oncostatic and anti-proliferative effects on oncological cells. That is science speak for several types of anti-cancer properties. MLT is also known as a helpful adjuvant for the chemotherapy process. That means that adding MLT to chemotherapy is more effective than just the chemo drugs by themselves. On a side note, if you want to understand vaccines better, search adjuvant and vaccines.
A search on PubMed for melatonin and cancer shows almost 4000 published articles as of 2025.
Some examples of recent studies go like this.
…experimental studies have documented that melatonin could inhibit different kinds of cancer…
…Melatonin anticancer activity is mediated by interfering with various cancer hallmarks…
…Melatonin plays an important role in cancer through different pathways and may have therapeutic significance…
…an increasing number of studies have described the anticancer effects of melatonin…
What is the takeaway here? Taking a little melatonin might have great benefit for you and your immune response. If you read the popular press, you will most likely only find references to melatonin and sleep. In our house, we take about 3mg at night to help with sleep but even if that isn’t an issue, we take it for the immune benefits.
In my recent past, I got a bad cold. I hadn’t had a cold like that for many years, that is, since I discovered the combination of vitamin C, vitamin D, NAC, ALA and melatonin. I had somehow run out of melatonin and forgot to include it in my daily regimen.
So I had over a decade without a bad cold, quit the melatonin, bad cold appears, add back in the melatonin and am back to the mild colds that I'm most familiar with in these later years. I should add that I have a history of getting pretty much every cold going around so have an extensive history of trying anything to avoid them. I am happy just to get the mild ones now. I am not giving up; I am just avoiding the worst cases at this point. One of my granddaughters seems to have inherited my immune system (along with my stand-up hair). Hopefully she will learn more quickly than I did how to avoid the worst of those cold symptoms.
I am aware that the story above is anecdotal but still...
Lots of good melatonin supplements in OVitaminPro. A few that we have in our house are:
NuMedica Melatonin 3 mg 60 Lozenges
Bioclinic Naturals Somno-Pro 90 chewable tablets
NuMedica Melatonin Liquid Lemon 2 oz
DS
2025