What is melatonin?

Melatonin is a hormone made by the pineal gland, a small gland in the brain. Melatonin helps control your sleep and wake cycles. Very small amounts of it are found in foods such as meats, grains, fruits, and vegetables. You can also buy it as a supplement.

What does natural melatonin do in the body?

Your body has its own internal clock that controls your natural cycle of sleeping and waking hours. In part, your body clock controls how much melatonin your body makes. Normally, melatonin levels begin to rise in the mid- to late evening, remain high for most of the night, and then drop in the early morning hours.

Light affects how much melatonin your body produces. During the shorter days of the winter months, your body may produce melatonin either earlier or later in the day than usual. This change can lead to symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), or winter depression.

Natural melatonin levels slowly drop with age. Some older adults make very small amounts of it or none at all.

Many dread the dentist. Between the scraping and the drilling, it’s no wonder that fear of the dentist is one of the most common phobias.

[FORMMIT] In recent years, however, it’s become clear that proper dental care isn’t just important for healthy teeth, but for overall health. In fact, studies have tied poor dental health to heart disease, cancer and a shorter lifespan.

Though vital, dental work is also expensive. A yearly exam, tooth-cleaning and X-rays can cost well over $200, while more complex dental work such as root canals and capping teeth can cost more than $1,000.

“There is an expression, ‘Good dentistry is very expensive, but not as expensive as bad dentistry,’” said Dr. Gerald Curatola, owner of Rejuvenation Dentistry in New York.

Jokes aside, Curatola said dentistry, as a rule, has some of the highest overhead costs in the health industry.

“Dental equipment, dental materials, and dental laboratories, in addition to general office overhead, cause most dentists to incur overhead costs that are not experienced by other health professions,” he said. “To make matters worse, insurance coverage for dental procedures is woefully inadequate.”

Curatola said many dental insurance companies haven’t raised caps in decades and continue to limit annual expenses to about $2,000 annually.

“Yet insurance premiums have continually risen, (while) the procedures covered and percentage of coverage for dental procedures has not,” he said. “This has caused many companies to drop dental insurance for their employees as well.”