The Endocrine System - Glands and Hormones

[Music] all right guys welcome to psych explained in this video we're going to examine the endocrine system and to start let's compare it to another system in our body that you're probably familiar with and that would be our nervous system so let's start there now your nervous system is essentially a network of nerves hence nervous system that carries signals throughout the body whether it's to move my muscles control a thought control speech this is our nervous system it is composed of two parts our brain and spinal cord right right down the middle this would be our central nervous system the first component and all the nerves that flow away from the brain and spinal cord that would be our peripheral nervous system or pns right peripheral meaning outside in terms of the signal message that flows along those nerves that would be an electrical signal okay and that's important because the endocrine system is vastly different and you remember what that electrical signal is called that's called an action action what an action potential okay so for example put that in parentheses i have my little nerve here right max potential is going to stimulate this pre-synaptic neuron that's going to cause a flood of neurotransmitters to float across the synapse and bind the receptors on a post-synaptic neuron and continue and continue until that message is received now the pathway that electrosignal takes is along those nerves or neurons and in terms of the speed it is extremely fast right the moment i think about moving my finger my finger moves so there's our nervous system now how does this differ or even compare it to our endocrine system well instead of a network of nerves our endocrine system is a network of glands okay you might be thinking what's a gland well a gland is any organ that releases or secretes a chemical message right so instead of an electrical message this is going to secrete a chemical message and do we know what that chemical message is called hormones okay so all these glands are going to release something called hormones throughout the body now our action potentials flow along nerves but where do these chemicals called hormones flow well these are actually going to flow through our blood okay our bloodstream okay so they enter through the bloodstream and they're gonna flow throughout the body via our cardiovascular system and go to whatever destination it needs to and as opposed to the nervous system which is extremely fast our our endocrine system can tend to be very slow it might take days to weeks even months for our hormones to have an effect on let's say part of the body like during puberty right so there's a nice fundamental difference between the nervous system and the endocrine system the best analogy that i've heard i think to understand these two is the nervous system is like an email right you send it to one person you have a target you know exactly you're going to send it to and it's extremely fast right instantaneous while the endocrine system is more like a social media post right you put it out there you don't know who's going to open it when they're going to open it is extremely slow it's also going to everybody and we'll see kind of who receives it right so there's kind of a nice difference between the two all right now let's start with our endocrine system what are all the glands or the endocrine glands that make up the system we're going to start with the most important what is that that is up here this right here and we'll shade that in together okay this is called our hypo [Music] hypothalamus okay this is extremely important this is the command center okay this is the part of the brain that essentially maintains or regulates homeostasis right if you're too hot you get a cold if you're too thirsty you gotta drink if you're hungry you gotta eat if you're sleepy you gotta sleep it's gotta make sure that we maintain homeostasis so that would be one of our main functions to what maintain maintain homeo stasis all right so it's got to make sure that our body is in a balanced state now what's also cool about the hypothalamus is kind of the link between the endocrine system and the nervous system and let's write that in it is the link between and i'll abbreviate here the nervous system and the endocrine system right because it receives electrical signals throughout the body the organs and and the heart the liver and all that kind of stuff it also controls the autonomic nervous system which is a subdivision of the peripheral nervous system and it communicates with the other glands to secrete hormones so it's kind of that bridge between the nervous system and the endocrine system and in terms of what it regulates it does a lot okay so here's just some examples it helps control or regulate things like metabolism we'll talk about that in a second metabolism uh growth right going through puberty or having your muscles grow and things like that even your mood okay and sleep okay we'll put a nice big h up here so remember that's our hypothalamus okay all right so that's the commander now if we think about this as like the boss right well who would be second in command well second command will be these two lobes right here would we call that this would be the pituitary gland okay the pituitary gland and this would be our second in command all right now what does pituitary gland do well first it's often known as the master gland okay and why is it considered the master gland because it controls or regulates the majority of other glands in our body see the hypothalamus and pituitary gland are very hands-on okay and they communicate to each other all right thalamus is going to get signals from the body it's going to release and secrete specific hormones it's going to then tell the pituitary gland to release hormones of itself to affect the rest of the body so that's kind of connection right there now in terms of what it affects it affects things like the thyroid we'll talk about that in a second the thyroid gland it affects the adrenal glands okay it's going to secrete hormones and affect these and the ovaries and testes which we'll label as the gonads the sex glands okay now you can get actually really specific when it comes to pituitary gland you'll notice how there's kind of two little lobes this one being what we call the anterior meaning in front and this one being the posterior lobe in back they all secrete or produce specific hormones so if you want to look up anterior lobe or posterior lobe you'll get a lot of information about what each one produces or does but just one example is uh would be the growth hormone okay this is one well-known hormone that's secreted and produced by the pituitary so this goes to our muscles it goes to our bones right it's definitely released during puberty just to make sure everything's working properly so gh would be our abbreviation okay so there's nice information okay so before we get to the lobes that pituitary gland um regulates let's go to our third and final lobe that's in the brain you see that little green dot right there that's our third lobe in the brain and what's that that's the pineal gland okay the pineal glands and the pineal gland named after because it looks like a pine cone deals with one thing well primarily one thing and that is sleep okay so what does it do it helps release or regulate regulate regulate our sleep cycle and how does it do that well it releases a very specific hormone that affects our sleep and makes you all sleepy and what is that it releases melatonin and that's melatonin so that's going to put us nice to sleep then we get up in the morning our pineal gland is going to suppress melatonin and get us nice and awake and let's actually do an arrow so we know where our pineal gland is located all right so let's get to the glands outside of the brain and many of them controlled by the pituitary gland let's start with the first rod and that is our thyroid okay it kind of looks like a butterfly it kind of looks like a i don't know like a bow tie and this is located um right in hugs our trachea our windpipe is located right below my adam's apple okay and what is our thyroid do well our thyroid mainly helps with metabolism metabolism okay so what is metabolism metabolism essentially taking in a food and turning that into fuel or energy and it does it a few ways it will help you know secrete a couple different hormones things like t3 and t4 and once again we're not going to get too specific but it does create specific hormones to make sure that happens now you'll also notice with the thyroid there's kind of little you know four little dots on each corner okay that's because there's also gland located just behind that thyroid and what is that called that would be our parathyroid para thyroid okay and what does our parathyroid do our parathyroid helps release or regulate we'll say regulate regulate the amount of calcium in our blood and then our bones right you ever hear that saying you know drink your milk because uh there's a lot of calcium that's going to help your bones well there is some truth to that all right so there's our parathyroid all right what else we also have we have our kidneys right here we have what we call our adrenal glands all right i'll do a little arrow once again this is our adrenal glands okay and why do we call it adrenal because they are adjacent to the kidneys okay and the cool thing about our adrenal glands and you'll see them kind of on both sides is everything it does is really for our survival and make sure that we are okay in times of danger or stress so what does our adrenal glands do well it's going to secrete a few things it's going to secrete things like cortisol okay which is our main stress hormone right so if you're doing public speaking uh if you are doing something like uh taking a test talking to somebody oh no going on a date right that would be cortisol or something like adrenaline also known as epinephrine okay and this is more involved in our fight what is it called fight or flight response okay so if you're really in danger right it's going to flood your system dilate pupils blood's going to rust your hands you can fight you could run faster right so that's our adrenal glands now it also has some anti-inflammatory function so if you hurt yourself it's kind of like a built-in advil or tylenol in your body those would be our adrenal glands all right now just in the middle of those and behind our stomach right by our abdomen is this little blue one right here we'll color that in okay and it's a nice flat endocrine gland and this one do an arrow is what we call our pancreas okay our pancreas now what does our pancreas do our pancreas okay primarily regulates our blood sugar levels okay or glucose okay so when you eat blood sugar is going to go up but when you don't eat it's going to go down how does it do that it does that by secreting specific hormones re-specific hormones things like insulin okay so when you eat a lot and you your blood sugar is raised your pancreas can produce insulin to lower that or if you don't eat enough it's going to secrete glucagon all right so there's our pancreas making sure that our blood sugar levels are right in line and guess what happens if it doesn't work or not a line that could lead to diabetes okay all right what's last our last ones are considered our gonads okay or in women it would be our ovaries and in men it would be our testes let's start with the ovaries now what are our ovaries our ovaries and we'll start with what it secretes it secretes estrogen estrogen and progesterone progesterone okay and what are these effects well these are going to affect things like female female sex characteristics character you might be thinking what female characteristics would they be things like widening of the hips breast development releasing egg producing milk after a child born right so everything involved in child fertility growth would be ovaries and in terms of men and by the way we'll do a little arrow so we know what we're talking about okay in men we have our testes okay instead of secreting estrogen and progesterone what are the testes release secrete this is going to release testosterone neuron okay instead of female sex characteristics what do we have we are going to have or regulate male sex characteristics and what would be some male sex characteristics what would be things like body hair and deepening of the voice and producing sperm and a sex drive or libido so that would be our testosterone and as we age both estrogen and testosterone tend to decrease so that's important to know as well so these probably make up our endocrine glands all right guys thanks for watching i hope you learned a lot don't forget to like the video subscribe i'll see you next time

Channel: Psych Explained

Views: 11,103

Keywords: endocrine system, glands, pineal gland, pituitary gland, oxytocin, thyroid, pancreas, insulun, melatonin, ovaries, estrogen, testes, testosterone, growth hormone, hormones, adrenal glands, cortisol, adrenaline, blood sugar, metabolism, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, hypothalamus, nervous system, progesterone, master gland

Id: tQ_9mKk0FmE

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 02 2022