Hi everyone.

You should have already watched module 2 video #1 about the nervous
system. In this video, we’re going to talk about the endocrine system and how that
system is also intimately connected to our stress response. We’ll also see how the
nervous and endocrine systems function closely together to affect all the other
systems in our body.

The Endocrine
System

LO2: How
does the Glands that help control the body
endocrine Secrete hormones into the blood
system
operate? E.g., Androgens, estrogens, ACTH, thyroid hormones,
glucocorticoids

Hypothalamusand pituitarygland are the main control

centres
HPP axes
Adrenal glands important for the stress response
HPA axis
 Your nervous system is a very fast-acting system. You can think about doing an
action, like moving your arm, and it happens almost instantaneously. Your endocrine
system, on the other hand, is slower acting. This is because your nervous system has
nerves through which electrical signals can pass. Your endocrine system instead
relies on molecules traveling through your body through slower means, like your
blood stream.

This idea brings us to the question: What is the difference between a

neurotransmitter and a hormone?
• A neurotransmitter is a molecule used by your nervous system to send a signal from
one neuron to the next. A neurotransmitter travels a very tiny distance across the
synaptic cleft between neurons. So you can have a neurotransmitter like
noradrenaline, that is released by one neuron, travels across the synaptic cleft, and
acts on the next neuron. This molecule travels all of like a thousandth of a cm to
have an effect.
• A hormone is a molecule that is released by a gland, travels through the blood
stream to some far-off region of the body, and then often has an effect on another
gland or organ.

The difference is not in the actual molecules, but in how they’re released and how
they travel around the body. So the same molecule could be a neurotransmitter if it
is secreted from one neuron and acts on another, or it could be a hormone if it is
secreted from, say, the adrenal gland, into the blood stream to then travel to your
heart to have an effect there. These molecules can travel meters around your body
to have their effects.

Your endocrine system is made up of all these glands in your body that secrete and
respond to hormones, like androgens and estrogens (your reproductive hormones),
thyroid hormones, and stress hormones (like CRH, ACTH, and glucocorticoids like
cortisol). All kinds of glands secrete hormones and these hormones are all impacted
by stress. Some hormones are secreted more during stress, like obviously the stress
hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, and other hormones are secreted less during
stress, like your reproductive hormones.

The nervous and endocrine systems depend on one another. They stimulate and
inhibit each other’s activities to help the body respond to challenges, like stressors,
and then to return back to a resting baseline state once a challenge is over. Your
nervous system controls more fast-acting responses that only last for a short time,
while your endocrine system controls more slow-acting responses that last for
longer.

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Another example of the tight relationship between the nervous and endocrine
systems is that one part of the nervous system, your hypothalamus (an important
brain area), is basically the main control centre for your endocrine system. Your
hypothalamus is considered a neuroendocrine gland because there is a tiny
circulatory system that connects your hypothalamus to your pituitary gland. Your
hypothalamus releases hormones (so it’s considered a gland) into this tiny circulatory
system that then affect the pituitary gland, a gland at the base of your brain. The
hypothalamus tells the pituitary gland to either start or stop releasing hormones. The
hormones released by the pituitary gland then travel through the blood stream to
influence the activity of many other glands and organs throughout the body.

This system is called the HPP axis, or the hypothalamic-pituitary-peripheral gland

axis. Your hypothalamus tells your pituitary what to do, then your pituitary relays
that message to the appropriate gland found in the periphery of your body. For
example, your pituitary could tell your ovaries to start releasing more estrogen, or
your testes to stop releasing testosterone, or your thyroid to release more thyroid
hormone.

Now if we’re talking about stress, the pituitary gland influences a gland that sits right
on top of your kidneys, called the adrenal gland. You have one on top of each kidney.
The adrenal glands are important for releasing our main stress hormone, cortisol.
Cortisol is a type of glucocorticoid hormone. This stress hormone cortisol, released
from the adrenal gland, then travels around our body to influence a bunch of other
organs in our body so that we can respond to a stressor. This specific hormonal
cascade is called the HPA axis, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal gland axis. The
HPA axis, along with our sympathetic nervous system, are the main ways our body
activates the stress response.

Now, this is great in the short term. We want to be able to respond to an emergency
when one exists. However, what tends to happen now is that we activate this
cascade of stress response hormones all the time in a chronic fashion, and especially
when there is no real physical emergency to respond to. We activate this system
when we are safe and warm in our homes but we’re just worried about things from
the past, things going on right now, or things that are coming up in the future. So
here again you see this intimate mind-body connection. Our hypothalamus (part of
our brain) basically translates our thoughts into changes in our body by initiating or
stopping various hormonal cascades. Our stressful thoughts can have a physical
impact on our bodies because they actually change the way our nervous system and
endocrine systems are working. Our thoughts physically change the amount and
types of hormones circulating around our bodies, which then impact our physical
organs, which make up our body systems, which can then impact our overall health.
So again, we see that everything is connected when it comes to our health.
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 The Adrenal
Gland

This slide shows an image from your textbook highlighting the different ways that
your nervous and endocrine systems affect your adrenal gland when you get
stressed. You see your adrenal gland is actually divided into two parts, your adrenal
medulla and your adrenal cortex. Your sympathetic nervous system affects your
adrenal medulla. [Remember this image (see slide) from video #1 showing how the
SNS stimulates the adrenal gland to release adrenaline?] So your nervous system
causes the release of the hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline from one of your
endocrine glands.

Brief aside: Adrenaline and epinephrine are different words for the same molecule.
Adrenaline is the common term and epinephrine is the American term. Adrenaline
comes from the word 'adrenal' gland. Epinephrine comes from the words ‘epi’ (which
means ‘upon’) and ‘nephros’ (which is Greek for kidney) because the adrenal glands
sit ‘upon’ the kidneys. Ok, aside done ☺

You can see on the slide the effects in the body caused by adrenaline and
noradrenaline. We’ll talk about some of these effects more in the next video on
the cardiovascular system.

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Then we see that the adrenal cortex is affected by the hormones released from the
pituitary gland, which stimulates the adrenal gland to release cortisol. You see that
the effects of cortisol released from the cortex relate to mobilizing energy, like
getting glucose into the blood stream, while the effects of adrenaline and
noradrenaline from the medulla relate to moving that energy around the body so
that it gets to where it needs to go, through increasing the speed and force at which
the blood flows through the body.
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Physiology of the Stress Response

LO5: What are the l

physiologica systems
• Stress response evolved to deal with acute
involved in the stress emergencies
response? • We now activate it chronically for non-emergencies

• Stress causes release of:

• Adrenaline/noradrenaline (SNS effect on adrenal gland)
• Cortisol (pituitary effect on adrenal gland)
• Negative feedback from cortisol

So, like I’ve mentioned, we know that the stress response evolved to deal with
immediate and short term, or acute, emergencies. This would usually take the form
of trying to catch food or trying to not become food for something else, like if you
came across a giant bear that wanted to snack on you. But now we activate this
heavy-duty survival machinery in our bodies all the time for non-emergencies.
Activating the stress response to deal with a stressor is a good thing because it is
designed to get your body ready to fight or flee to deal with an acute problem.
However, if you keep your body in this heightened state of emergency all the time,
that puts a lot of wear and tear on your body. Your body didn’t evolve to thrive in a
state of emergency all the time.
Here I’ll describe the specific hormones involved in the HPA axis we talked about
earlier in a bit more detail. The system works like this:
You get stressed by something, be it something in the environment, or something in
your own mind.
When you get stressed, your hypothalamus releases corticotrophin-releasing
hormone (CRH) into that tiny blood stream that connects it to the pituitary gland.

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CRH then stimulates your pituitary gland to secrete adrenocorticotropic hormone
(ACTH), which travels through your blood stream from the base of your brain to your
adrenal gland, where it stimulates your adrenal gland to release cortisol. Cortisol
then gets into your blood stream and has an array of effects all aimed at mobilizing
energy for your body to deal with the stressor that started this whole hormonal
cascade in the first place.

Now the other thing that is important to mention is that this system does have a
negative feedback control. You have receptors for cortisol in your brain, many of
which are found in the hippocampus. These receptors help determine when there is
enough cortisol in your body to deal with the stressor. Once there is enough, a
negative feedback signal is initiated that then shuts down this hormonal cascade by
causing the hypothalamus to stop secreting CRH, which then stops the rest of the
cascade. This is another example of how your body has evolved to stay in balance to
be healthy. However, if we activate our stress response too much and too often, we
can start to cause this negative feedback system to break down and malfunction,
which then makes our stress response harder to control. We’ll talk more about that
idea when we get to module 6, which is all about stress.
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Physiology of the Stress Response

LO5: What l
are the
• Stress response adapted for
physiologica muscle action
systems • The stress response prepares
involved in
the stress
the body for a major use of
response? energy
• Fight or flight

• Some processes are shut

down during stress
• Reproduction
• Digestion
• Growth & tissue repair

To sum up our discussion of the physiology of the stress response, we’ll recap some
important ideas. As I’ve mentioned a few times now, or stress response is all about
mobilizing energy to help us deal with emergencies, generally by either fighting or
running away. In our modern times, sometimes that energy can be harnessed to get
through a really tough stretch of work or deadlines.

However, because our energy is going to emergencies, that means energy is taken
away from other processes that typically happen in our bodies, like reproduction
(which is why stress is known to reduce someone’s chance of getting pregnant),
digestion slows (so you might lose your appetite when you’re really stressed or
experience digestive issues), and growth and tissue repair are put on the back
burner. There’s a condition called stress dwarfism where it’s been shown that
children that grow up in really stressful environments don’t grow as tall as they
otherwise would have. It also takes longer for wounds to heal in people that are
stressed.

So we can see that stress in and of itself is not the issue. Our bodies have evolved to
effectively deal with stress. However, our bodies have not evolved to effectively deal
with stress ALL THE TIME. So it’s important to learn how to cope with and manage
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stress, two important things that a Heath Psychologist can help someone with and
ideas we’ll talk much more about in module 7.

This brings us to the end of our brief tour through the endocrine system. I hope you
now have a deeper appreciation both for how the endocrine and nervous systems
are intimately related and also how the endocrine system is one of the most
important systems that influence our stress response. In our next video, we’ll talk
about the cardiovascular system and investigate in more detail some of the effects of
the endocrine system on the cardiovascular system that we touched on in this video.
See you there…
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