How do the Organs Know How MUCH Hormone to Make?
It all starts in the Brain. I tell patients, we can get a heart transplant, a lung transplant, a liver transplant, a kidney transplant. We can live without our legs or arms. We can even live without our bowel now. It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of medical care… but we can actually now live without our bowel.
But guess what. We can’t get a brain transplant or live without our brain. The brain is truly the Commander in Chief.
Even when we are sleeping, the brain is always monitoring everything going on in the body… including the levels of hormones in the blood stream, tissues, and organs. Based on what the brain discovers going on, it makes a determination of whether more or less Hormones are needed to carry out all the functions that Hormones are responsible for.
As the brain makes these determinations, it sends out the proper signals with its OWN chemical messengers. Some of these brain chemicals are Hormones in and of themselves! In fact, the most important Endocrine organ of all resides right in the brain! Can you guess what that gland is?
It's the Pituitary Gland!
And did you know that the Pituitary Gland makes 10 different hormones? Each one of these Pituitary Gland hormones communicate to all the other Endocrine glands and “tell” the other glands what to do.
For example, Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) and Luteinizing Hormone (LH) are hormones that the Pituitary gland secretes to tell the Ovaries to make more or less Estrogen, Testosterone and Progesterone.
There is a constant state of communication going on between the brain and the Endocrine organs that keep our Endocrine glands informed on how much of their particular hormone to make and when to release it out into the blood stream.
For instance, if the brain senses that you need more Estrogen to help grow hair, skin and nails, or needs Estrogen to help stimulate the thyroid hormone, or build up the uterine wall in preparation for ovulation, or heal a dry vagina, or stimulate digestive juices to digest food, or even need more Estrogen to think more quickly and creatively… the brain will send a signal to the ovaries to make more Estrogen for all these potential needs the brain senses going on.
Just like the brain will make your heart pump faster and make you breath faster if it needs more Oxygen, the brain will also stimulate your Endocrine organs to make more hormones if it senses you are getting low on a hormone you need to perform healthy functions. The brain will also send out a signal to make LESS Hormone if it senses that you need LESS. In Science, this is called a Feedback loop system.
A feedback loop system is nothing more than a thermostat. When you set your air-conditioner or heater to 70 degrees, the thermostat will send a message to the compressor to turn on and off to maintain 70 degrees in your house.
It Truly IS a Brain's World!
Leave a comment