Ma vie en noir. Fifty years with melatonin and the stone of madness
Explores the history of pineal and melatonin, from the autobiographical perspective of a leading author in the field. Focuses on the personal experience and achievements of Dr. Daniel Cardinali. Discussion ranges from historical aspects to personal issues. The objective of this book is to summarize;...
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| Formato: | Libro |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
Springer
2022
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| Acceso en línea: | https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/15201 |
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| Sumario: | Explores the history of pineal and melatonin, from the autobiographical perspective of a leading author in the field. Focuses on the personal experience and achievements of Dr. Daniel Cardinali. Discussion ranges from historical aspects to personal issues. The objective of this book is to summarize; to recapitulate the eventful life of the
pineal gland as a historical entity related to the legend of the stone of madness, in
large part forgotten; to assess the impact in the life of a scientist who serendipitously
linked his scientifi c career to an issue like melatonin at a moment when the groundwork for the “hormone of darkness” was being laid; to ponder the meaning of the
work of a scientist and to conclude that it is simply to push a little further the borders
of science and to perpetuate this endeavor by nurturing disciples who scientifi cally
exceed their teacher’s achievements.
This work is not a scientifi c review but what memory has left in the mind of this
author after having lived half a century with an objective: to elucidate the mechanism and meaning of the main pineal product, melatonin, and to take it to a stage of
therapeutic application. Today we know that in humans pineal melatonin begins to
be released every day toward the evening and there is evidence that this serves as
the trigger of the sleep process (the signal that “opens the gates of sleep”). Thus a
brief account of the historical development of concepts about sleep will be included.
There is no doubt that the understanding of sleep has been central to the development of the concept of mind and consciousness, and many famous passages in literature illustrate how the ideas on sleep evolve.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), who refl ected on many aspects of sleep in
The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha , puts into the mouth of Sancho
the following words:
All that I know is that so long as I am asleep I have neither fear nor hope, trouble nor glory;
and good luck betide him that invented sleep, the cloak that covers over all a man’s thoughts,
the food that removes hunger, the drink that drives away thirst, the fi re that warms the cold;
the cold that tempers the heat” and, to wind with, the universal coin wherewith everything
is bought, the weight and balance, that makes the shepherd equal with the king and the fool
with the wise man. Sleep, I have heard say, has only one fault, that it is like death; for
between a sleeping man and a dead man there is very little difference (II, 68). Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600–1681), another prominent Spanish writer,
wrote in Life Is a Dream a famous sonnet with the following lines:
…What is life? A thing that seems / A mirage that falsely gleams / Phantom joy, delusive
rest / Since is life a dream at best / And even dreams themselves are dreams
And William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote in Henry IV , Part II, Act III, Scene 1:
O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
But no one was more anticipative than Thomas Dekker (c 1572–1632), who
wrote about sleep the following words:
Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
Today it is clear that the major pandemics we face (obesity, cardiovascular disease, dementias) have as a comorbidity, and presumably as a cause, insuffi cient
sleep. As we will see in this book, it is important to understand that we have not
always slept in the same way we do today. The invention of the electric lamp by
Thomas Edison (1847–1931) was a major landmark in this respect. While Edison
emphasized that the use of the electric lamp “did not affect the quality of sleep and
was harmful to health,” we sleep today about 3 h less per day than in the pre-Edison
era! The inhibition of melatonin secretion by artifi cial light plays an important role
in these changes.
Melatonin is the prototype of the “chronobiotic” drugs used to synchronize and
increase the amplitude of the sleep/wake cycle. In Argentina melatonin was introduced to the market as an over-the-counter medicament for insomnia in 1995, and
analogs of melatonin are used for this purpose in the USA (ramelteon, tasimelteon)
and for the treatment of depression (agomelatine, approved by the European
Medicines Agency in Europe). But none of this explains the reasons for the evolutionary persistence of melatonin already detectable in organisms that neither sleep
nor suffer emotional distress. And this is one of the most exciting aspects of melatonin functioning: it is a substance that is present in most living organisms, from
unicellular with aerobic respiration, to plants, to higher mammals, an irrefutable
proof of its importance for life. We will discuss in this book how the cytoprotective
function of melatonin may be of relevance in the prevention of obesity, cardiovascular diseases, or neurodegenerative processes.
There is much in the history of pineal melatonin that attracts and that will be
recapitulated in this book. But before moving on to that, I feel it necessary to explain
the reason for the title, which might puzzle the reader. The discoverer of melatonin,
Aaron Lerner, christened the molecule with that name ( melano , Greek for “black”)
by its action on the pigment cells of the amphibian skin. Mimicking “La vie en
rose,” the immortal Edith Piaf song written in 1946, I call this story on melatonin
Ma vie en noir. Following the ideas of Jorge Luis Borges one could imagine memory as a
breakdown of oblivion. And somehow the breakdown of the stone of madness is
behind this story: perhaps the stone itself has infected the author. |
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