I have actually asked myself what are hormones? I want to understand how my body does the amazing things it does. I also have wanted to understand how the hormones know when to do the things they do and where they get their orders from, anyway?
How did my body go through THE CHANGE?
How did my body know when to begin to age gracefully with a full head of silver hair? Why do the wrinkles begin to show now? How does my body know when it is time Mother Nature’s practical joke, or as doctor’s so blandly put it, the menstrual cycle to arrive right on schedule? What system in my body makes these crazy things happen?
What are hormones and what do they do?
Hormones are nature’s messenger system within animal or plant organisms. In the case of humans these messages are carried from within the endocrine system to the related parts of the body with “encoded” information that tells the parts what to do and when to do them. The human body has 30 such hormones to carry these messages. They travel from certain glands that specialize in communicating with particular parts of the body.
The hormones are produced in endocrine glands. The glands then send the messages to the parts that need information to help the body grow, develop, and reproduce. As long as the hormones do their jobs correctly, the body will grow from a wee babe to an old fogey in a mostly predictable way, transitioning the human from a baby, to a child, to a teen, to an adult and onward to old age. At each stage the hormones tell the body when to grow, develop and eventually reproduce.
Where to do the hormones get their orders?
Hormones perform specific jobs within the human body. So for my body that is only 5”3, my pituitary gland where the hormone’s function is to grow my body, it would appear that it went quiet after the age of 11 when I reached my full height. The adrenal glands are where my action hormones are produced to get me moving. If I am in an excitable state the adrenaline will really flow and I will be more active than normal. The sex glands take care of the hormones that defined my body as it is with female reproductive organs, petite build, breasts, and other mitigating things that define my body as female gender.
Your body has a
little messengers inside it
What are the functions of hormones, you ask? The glands need to send information to other parts of the body to perform those specific actions. The glands need a messenger to carry that information. The hormones are sort of like the homing pigeons of the human body that carry the encoded messages to do important things related to being human.
I found it helpful to think of my glands as coding offices that send the hormone “pigeons” to the stations throughout my body to set their missions to into action as the best way to answer my question regarding what are hormones.
