Endocrine System: The Power of Hormones in Driving Changes and Balance in Your Body

In our life journey, we encounter lots of changes but non can be as confusing as going from a child to a teenager. At this point, teenagers who are experiencing puberty begin to notice changes in their body such as hair growing in weird places, voice changes, emotional switches, and change in body size. In pregnant women, it is a different scene entirely as they can act and behave in so many rational ways and their body start to experience lots of changes. You see, all this changes no matter how fast or slow they happen is mediated by one system, the Endocrine system.

The endocrine system and hormones are responsible for a lot of things in our body and they become very visible during puberty. The body is a large place, and there are organs, and system that need to work in synergy to make it function properly and in other for it to send messages on how to function or react, it needs the release chemicals which are messangers known as Hormones.

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There is a possibility you have heard of chemical substances like Cortisol, Testosterone, Dopamine, Adrenaline, Leptin, Progesterone, Estrogene, and so on. These chemical substances are referred to as Hormones, and they travel throug our circulatory system in other to reach cells and organs that the information are meant for. These hormones help us identify a lot of things such as Leptin helping to know when we are hungry, melatonin for sleeping, Adrenaline to keep the body when it senses danger, and so on including when new body parts are needed too grow.

This secreted chenical messages help the body send informations to various parts of itself, telling them what they need to do because the body needs a coordinated communication system which helps them keep the body stable as well as induce changes when needed or required. So, the hormones released in the body interacts with over 30 trillion cells lots of organs and different systems.

For the longest of time in medical history, it was believed that most of bodily functions from fertility, body temperature, and so on was controlled by the nervous system but this changed in the 1800s by Arnold Berthold who decided to experiment on chicken where he put Testicles which were removed from male chickens into them but in a different location. His discovery that the chickens still became roosters changed the phase of medicine.

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Over time, scientists were able to identify that the changes in the body was as a result of hormones and it was the function of the endocrine system. This was the last system identified by doctors because most of the messagers and the messages were almost invisible. Today, there are over 50 hormones in the body ranging from thyroxine, Epinephrine, and so on, created by 9 glands at different parts of the body.

Once these hormones are sent into the body, they go through the blood stream to the destination where they are needed and they bind to receptors in those areas to deliver their chemical messages. Hormones can do a lot of things in the body that we might not even notice since they do not send us notes that are about to do them, such as responding to changes in blood sugar, trigger our body to tell it when to burn or store energy depending on the environment, response to danger, and they even do so well to tell the body to prepare for other bodies that would grow inside them.

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When it comes to communication in the body, hormones aren't the only messanger because the body also communicates using electrical signals too. This is sent from the brain via neurons, and this is faster but this would mean overworking the nervous system but then, the Hormones do not do it alone for instance the Pineal gland in the central nervous system also affect the daily rhythm of cells in the body. They both work hand in hand as the endocrine system can act on neurons in the brain which will then control glands in the brain to send signals to other glands telling to either make more or less hormones.

Hormones can also be funny as they can act differently in different organisms like for instance, Prolactin in the human body acts on the breast signaling breast growth and milk production but the same prolactin in other animal can impact different things such as for ion uptake and salt concentration in fishes, and incubating of eggs during the brooding periods in birds.

The endocrine system is a marvel of biological engineering, coordinating countless functions through a sophisticated network of hormonal messengers. While we often focus on the more noticeable changes during puberty or pregnancy, hormones are at work behind the scenes, ensuring our bodies adapt and respond to various conditions. It's a reminder of the intricate and interconnected nature of our physiology, demonstrating that even the smallest chemical messengers can have a profound impact on our lives.

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