Why endocrine system is important

During puberty, a girl will have breast growth, start to accumulate body fat around the hips and thighs, and have a growth spurt. Estrogen and progesterone are also involved in the regulation of a girl's menstrual cycle. These hormones also play a role in pregnancy. Pancreas: The pancreas pronounced: PAN-kree-us makes insulin pronounced: IN-suh-lin and glucagon pronounced: GLOO-kuh-gawn , which are hormones that control the level of glucose , or sugar, in the blood.

Insulin helps keep the body supplied with stores of energy. The body uses this stored energy for exercise and activity, and it also helps organs work as they should. Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD. Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. What Is the Endocrine System?

What Does the Endocrine System Do? Endocrine glands release hormones into the bloodstream. This lets the hormones travel to cells in other parts of the body. The endocrine hormones help control mood, growth and development, the way our organs work, metabolism , and reproduction.

The endocrine system regulates how much of each hormone is released. This can depend on levels of hormones already in the blood, or on levels of other substances in the blood, like calcium. Many things affect hormone levels, such as stress, infection, and changes in the balance of fluid and minerals in blood. What Are the Parts of the Endocrine System? Jump to: Endocrine system function Endocrine system diseases What is an endocrinologist?

Additional resources. Located on the tops of the kidneys, these glands produce steroid hormones such as corticosterone, which helps regulate the body's stress response and maintain homeostasis. The pituitary gland is a small bean-shaped gland at the base of the brain. It controls the thyroid gland, adrenal glands, ovaries and testicles by secreting hormones that signal those glands to also produce hormones.

The hypothalamus is a small gland in the brain located near the pituitary gland. It collects information from virtually all other areas of the central nervous system, and in response it releases hormones that tell the pituitary gland which hormones to send out to other glands.

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland located in the neck. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal HPA or HTPA axis is a complex set of direct influences and steroid-producing feedback interactions among the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands.

All vertebrates have an HPA, but the steroid-producing stress response is so important that even invertebrates and monocellular organisms have analogous systems. The HPA is important to psychology because it is intimately involved with many mood disorders involving stress, including anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, insomnia, PTSD, borderline personality disorder, ADHD, depression, and many others.

Antidepressants work by reglulating the HPA axis. The hypothalamus contains neurons that synthesize and secrete vasopressin and corticotropin-releasing hormone CRH. These two hormones travel through blood to the anterior pituitary, where they cause the secretion of stored adrenocorticotropic hormone ACTH.

The ACTH acts on the adrenal cortex, which produces steroids—in humans, primarily the steroid cortisol. This causes a negative feedback cycle in which the steroids inhibit the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, and it also causes the adrenal gland to produce the hormones epinephrine also known as adrenaline and norepinephrine.

In the process described above, the HPA axis ultimately produces cortisol. Stressors that are uncontrollable, threaten physical integrity, or involve trauma tend to have a high, flat profile of cortisol release with lower-than-normal levels of cortisol in the morning and higher-than-normal levels in the evening resulting in a high overall level of daily cortisol release. On the other hand, controllable stressors tend to produce higher-than-normal morning cortisol.

Stress hormone release tends to decline gradually after a stressor occurs. In post-traumatic stress disorder there appears to be lower-than-normal cortisol release, and it is thought that a blunted hormonal response to stress may predispose a person to develop PTSD. There is growing evidence that prenatal stress can affect HPA regulation in humans.

Children who were stressed prenatally may show altered cortisol rhythms. For example, several studies have found an association between maternal depression during pregnancy and childhood cortisol levels.

Prenatal stress has also been implicated in a tendency toward depression and short attention span in childhood. However, there is no clear indication that HPA disregulation caused by prenatal stress can alter adult behavior. Hunger is divided into long-term and short-term regulation, each stimulating different hormone responses from the hypothalamus.

Hunger is the set of physical and psychological sensations that arise when food is needed by the body. Food consumption particularly overconsumption can result in weight gain, whereas insufficient consumption, or malnutrition, will cause significant weight and motivational energy loss. Hunger is controlled by the hypothalamus and hormones. It is regulated over both the long term and the short term.

The physical sensation of hunger comes from contractions of the stomach muscles. These contractions are believed to be triggered by high concentrations of the hormone ghrelin. Two other hormones, peptide YY and leptin, cause the physical sensations of being full. The following are integral parts of the endocrine system:.

Pineal body. The pineal body is located below the corpus callosum, in the middle of the brain. It produces the hormone melatonin, which helps the body know when it's time to sleep. The pituitary gland is located below the brain. Usually no larger than a pea, the gland controls many functions of the other endocrine glands.