Pass the Message

When I was still a child, i used to play the game "pass the message" wherein a group of people surround one "it" who tries to catch where the message is. In life, messages are important because they contain what we want to express. Messages can be sent by cellular phones, emails, letters and many other ways. But how are messages sent in the body? Do we have tiny postmen in our body? Or tiny cellphones scattered in our body perhaps? Or maybe, cells in our body email each other to send messages? Well of course, those are all products of my imagination. Our body has a set of organs that are responsible for transmitting messages, the Endocrine system.

Information in the human body is transmitted in two major routes: the nervous system and endocrine system. The nervous system uses electrical impulses to transmit information. The endocrine system uses hormones to pass information from cell to cell through the blood.

The endocrine system is composed of the glands, the hormones, and the body parts or group of cells onto which the hormones will react to. From this, endocrinology can be defined as the study of the glands from which hormones are produced, and the different disorders which arise from hormonal imbalance.

Endocrine glands are ductless glands which produces chemical messengers known as hormones. These glands are located in different parts of the body which serves different functions such as for growth, digestion, lactation and even contractions during giving birth. Of all the glands present in the body, the pituitary gland or the hypophysis is considered to be the master gland because hormones produced in it control other glands. It is divided into two regions, the anterior pituitary gland or adenohypophysis and the posterior pituitary gland or the neurohypophysis. The anterior synthesizes the hormones it secretes unlike the posterior which does not synthesize the hormones it secretes.

Anatomic position of Endocrine glands.
Photo from: http://www.healthadviceonline.biz/elken-mrt/step-4-health-regulation/5-endocrine-system/endocrine-system

Hormones are the chemical substances that transmit the information for the cells. They can be protein, aromatic amines or steroid in nature. They can also be classified as to autocrine and paracrine. Autocrines act onto the cells on which they were produced, on the other hand, paracrines act onto cells other than where they were produced. Hormones normally act onto target tissues where they act but some hormones act onto other glands to stimulate production of other hormones.

Diseases that arise from hormonal imbalance may be classified as hormonal excess and hormonal deficiency.

Here is a short video about the endocrine system and how it functions:

 

Video from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrMi4GikWwQ

References:Kaplan, Lawrence A. , Pesce, Amadeo J. ;Clinical Chemistry: Theory, Analysis and Correlation 2^nd Ed. ; p. 608McPherson, Richard A., Pincus, Matthew R.; Henry’s Clinical Diagnosis and Management by Laboratory Methods 22^nd Ed. ; pp. 365-366