Hi y'all, does anyone here have any knowledge or experience regarding Epitalon?? It is a synthetic peptide, based on epithalamin, which is made in the pineal gland. Epithalamin was first discovered in the late 1980's by Prof. Vladimir Khavinson from St. Petersburg Russia and has been in general use there since 1990, while epitalon is a synthetic analogue, currently considered a research chemical. It is known by several names, including Epitalon, Epithalon, Epithalone and Epithalamine. This caught my interest, as I've been researching the pineal gland a bit recently, and bar melatonin, I haven't heard much concerning other pineal metabolites. Pinoline is associated with pineal glands, but evidence of its production in human pineal is, at present, completely lacking.

Epitalon seems to work in part by influencing the telomeres in cells, which have been linked to the effects of cellular aging. This is interesting, as this is known to be a pineal gland metabolite, and the pineal gland is thought to play a role in puberty onset, and pineal function declines with age...melatonin levels are known to decline with age, and production of this peptide may too. There is increasing evidence that the decline of melatonin levels as we age due to decreasing pineal gland function may be linked to cognitive aging, increased cancer risk, reduction in sleep quality, and risk of Alzheimer's disease...please see thread below for more information on this.

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...spx?g=posts&m=665330

An article on it below, referenced to a few of the research papers.

http://nootropix.com/epitalon-fountain-of-youth/

Some information on its use and effects here:

http://steroid.es/epitalon.html

Some relevant papers are attached.

References:

A list of many relevant research papers here:

http://khavinson.info/publications

A few links to papers below, plenty more to be found on pubmed.

Anisimov, V.N., Khavinson, V.Kh., Popovich, I.G., Zabezhinski, M.A., Alimova, I.N., Rosenfeld, S.V., Zavarzina, N.Y., Semenchenko, A.V. & Yashin, A.I. (2003) Effect of Epitalon on biomarkers of aging, life span and spontaneous tumor incidence in female Swiss-derived SHR mice. Biogerontology, 4, 4, 193-202.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14501183

Anisimov, V.N., Popovich, I.G., Zabezhinskiĭ, M.A., Rozenfel'd, S.V., Khavinson, V.Kh., Semenchenko, A.V. & Iashin, A.I. (2005) Effect of epitalon and melatonin on life span and spontaneous carcinogenesis in senescence accelerated mice (SAM). Voprosy Onkologii, 51, (1), 93-98.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15909815

Goncharova, N.D., Vengerin, A.A., Shmaliĭ, A.V. & Khavinson, V.Kh. (2003) Peptide correction of age-related pineal disturbances in monkeys. Advances in Gerontology, 12, 121-127.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14743609

Khavinson, V.Kh., Lezhava, T.A., Monaselidze, J.R., Jokhadze, T.A., Dvalishvili, N.A., Bablishvili, N.K. & Trofimova, S.V. (2003) Peptide Epitalon activates chromatin at the old age. Neuro Endocrinology Letters, 24, (5), 329-333.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14647006

Khavinson, V.Kh. & Morozov V.G. (2003) Peptides of pineal gland and thymus prolong human life. Neuro Endocrinology Letters, 24, (3-4), 233-40.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14523363

Khavinson, V., Razumovsky, M., Trofimova, S., Grigorian, R. & Razumovskaya, A. (2002) Pineal-regulating tetrapeptide epitalon improves eye retina condition in retinitis pigmentosa. Neuro Endocrinology Letters, 23, (4), 365-368.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12195242

Kossoy, G., Anisimov, V.N., Ben-Hur, H., Kossoy, N. & Zusman, I. (2006) Effect of the synthetic pineal peptide epitalon on spontaneous carcinogenesis in female C3H/He mice. In Vivo, 20, (2), 253-257.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16634527

Sibarov, D.A., Vol'nova, A.B., Frolov, D.S. & Nozdrachev, A.D. (2007) Effects of intranasal administration of epitalon on neuron activity in the rat neocortex. Neuroscience and Behavioural Physiology, 37, (9), 889-93.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17955380

Interesting, I had never heard of epitalon before I read this thread yesterday, but found another article about it on a different website a few minutes after reading this one. What a strange coincidence! Seems pretty interesting, and really, really pricey.

Yeah I get those quirky coincidences too sometimes. I thought it was really pricey too, but looking into it a little more, apparently it only needs to be used a few times a year, seems to be potent stuff, and if used in this context it isn't really expensive.

so, it's a telomerase activator?..is the mode of action very different from TA-65 and other telomerase activators?

I believe so yes, I'm not really sure how its mode of action differs but it sounds like it is doing something similar. However it has been studied a lot longer than TA-65 and there is a lot more literature on it. Its action caught my interest as did its production by the pineal gland, it makes sense the pineal would produce other things aside from melatonin but this was the first compound I had come across also linked to the pineal. TA-65 is incredibly pricey!

Interesting to note that there are absolutely no reports of side effects or negative effects in the medical literature or described in anecdotal reports of being trialling this, it seems to be well tolerated and people have reported a range of beneficial health effects. Improved sleep quality and libido seem pretty commonly reported among older users of the compound.

This makes me curious as to whether pineal calcification as we age may be also affecting production of epithalamin, as well as melatonin. Meditation and yogic practices have long been considered to reduce the effects of aging, or the cognitive decline associated with aging, and these practices have been found to increase pineal production of melatonin, I wonder if they are linked? Melatonin, among other things, plays an important role in regulating neurogenesis in the hippocampus of the brain, and as we age (and experience cognitive decline), melatonin production decreases markedly, likely due to increased calcification of the pineal.

The aforementioned Goncharova et al. 2003 study looking at monkeys found that administration of epithalamin "(at the dose 5 mg/animal/day intramuscularly during 10 consecutive days) or epitalon (at the dose 10 micrograms/animal/day intramuscularly during 7-10 consecutive days) induced significant increase in the night plasma melatonin in old monkeys, but the treatment did not change the melatonin level in young monkeys." I thought this was interesting. Plenty of food for thought here I think.